Losing Him (Mitchell Family #8)(70)
“I missed you.” He kissed the side of my head before turning me around and pulling me into his arms.
“I missed you too.” It was the truth. I’d missed him every day for four years. I could deny it to myself, but it would have been a lie. In a matter of a half hour, I was right back to being infatuated with him. The problem was that he was my sister’s husband. He could never know how I felt or that I wasn’t her. This was all pretend. He wasn’t telling me that he missed me, he was telling her that.
He pulled away and looked me right in the eye. I tried to think of what my sister would say, except I was speechless.
“What do you want to do tonight?” I shrugged. “Don’t you have cards?” Stosh ran one of his hands up my back over my shirt. “I could stay home. We could hang out. It’s been a while since we’ve done that.” What was I supposed to say? How could I stand there and tell someone that I
wanted to spend every second with, that he should get as far away from me as he could? I swallowed my pride. How bad could it be? It wasn’t like I was climbing into bed with him. I didn’t want to be second to my sister, but since he thought I was her, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. “Okay.”
He seemed shocked that I agreed. After taking a green bean out of the pan and popping it into his mouth, he kissed me on the nose. “Go sit down. I’ll make our plates and meet you in the living room.”
I smiled and made my way over there. A few times, I caught myself looking over at him, admiring how much he’d changed since high school. He was even more handsome as an adult. Stosh’s hair had gotten darker and his face had more hair on it. He was still built well, just bigger. When he caught me looking, he winked at me. I turned my head and blushed like I was fourteen again. This wasn’t like me to act that way. I was mature and handled my relationships with a keen sense of responsibility. Whatever was happening, I had no control over myself.
When Stosh came over with two plates and the bottle of ranch, I had to laugh. I’d put ranch on everything when I was a kid and so did my sister. My father would always tell me that I was ruining the taste of my meat. He didn’t get it.
It was weird how Stosh watched me eat. Who was I kidding, everything was weird. This wasn’t my life. Pretending to be my sister was only going to break my heart all over again. He was clearly in love with her. I just wanted to know what that felt like.
I should have got up and walked out of the house. Whatever my sister was involved in, it was her problem, not mine.
Still, after all this time, I couldn’t tear myself away from this man. Even if it were only for a couple days, or one night, this was exactly where I wanted to be. I wanted to have my best friend back. I wanted to pretend that he’d never fallen in love with my sister.
I wanted to pretend that he was in love with me instead.