Kissed Blind (Hot Pursuit #2)(76)

Twenty-Five





I sighed, dreading Vance’s questions, but thanks to my liquid courage, I was more relaxed. “All right, shoot.” I tucked my hands in between my crossed thighs.

“Gabe wasn’t the only thing bothering you this week. You’ve broken up before and haven’t given me the silent treatment because of it. There’s more, so spill.”

I couldn’t think and worry about it anymore. I’d probably sound like an idiot bringing up the kiss again, but what the hell. “We were having a conversation by the car in your driveway.”

He tried to hold his face straight but wore a Mona Lisa smile. “Yep, we were. What was it about again?” He scratched the side of his head and looked to the stars.

“Giving me a hard time?”

“Oh, absolutely. Refresh my memory please.”

I pursed my lips. “You remembered kissing me after you got shot.”

He pointed his index fingers up and pretended to pull the memory from the corners of his mind. “That’s right. I did kiss you… in a drug induced stupor.”

“Yes, you did. And you’ve pretended for months to not remember.”

He nodded his agreement.

“One of the things bothering me is why you told me? Why now and why tell me at all?”

He shrugged.

“No.” I shook my finger at him. “You don’t get to not answer. If this is going to be a tell-all conversation then let’s tell it all. Tell me why.”

He pulled his top lip into his mouth. “Because I couldn’t stand not telling you.”

I squinted. “Like it’s been bothering you?”

“In a way. I felt like I was lying to you.”

“What?”

“Look, I can tease and poke fun at you, but it felt wrong holding onto this thing we’d shared. Not talking about it felt like a lie, and it’s been eating away at me since it happened. I chose then because it felt right.”

I snapped my fingers. “Just then? Just because?”

“Yes. Well, and you were talking all about food tasting like love at the dinner table. It popped in my head and was bound to come up again before the night ended.”

“Then I’m confused I guess, for the lack of a better term.”

“About what?”

“You said you loved kissing me but you couldn’t have me.” The air I breathed weighed on my chest like a lead blanket.

The smile that had teased his lips vanished, and his eyes grew dark and serious. “I did.”

“When you said you couldn’t have me then I can logically conclude that you’ve wanted me.”

He held up his hand, calling the waiter over to us, and ordered another round of drinks. “We’re going to need some more alcohol.”

I waited until the waiter left the table. “So explain it to me. Have you wanted me, like, in the past?”

His eyes never wavered from mine. “Yes,” he said, and the word echoed around us, drowning out the rest of the world.

“You did?” My gaze clouded, and my stomach fluttered. “B-but you never did or said anything when we first met. I thought you didn’t think of me like that.”

“Well, I did.” He glanced down at the table and coughed. “Do you remember walking into the kickboxing class the day we first met?”

“Of course.” The waiter returned with our round of drinks and placed the spinach and artichoke dip in the center of the table. “Thank you,” I said to the waiter, and he left. “I recognized you from high school and you came up to me and said hello.”

“Right, well, when I saw you, the little underclassman I’d known had grown into this beautiful woman. You had that solid black number on with the tight pants and sports bra trying to look all tough.” He smiled fondly at the image in his mind.

“Trying?”

He chuckled. “You weren’t fooling anyone.”

I sneered at him. “I could handle my own.”

“That’s beside the point. I was plotting how I was going to ask you out, but then I asked you if you’d been in an accident because you had that little bandage under your eye.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “And I told you the story about the guy who’d jumped me.” I scrunched my eyebrows. “Did that made me less appealing, or something? Like I was damaged goods?”

“No.” He shook his head. “More appealing actually. Knowing that was why you were in the class made you different. You weren’t just some chick trying the latest exercise craze, or even there to meet a guy like a lot of girls were. I respected you more for that.”

“Oh.”

“So, I couldn’t treat you like every other girl. I decided to wait to ask you out, and then we started training together. You were easier to be around than any other girl I’d ever hung out with, and I genuinely liked you. I even got to a point where I was afraid to screw that up. But, I waited too long, and we got offered the job at B&B. And then you started dating the douche canoe.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s really nice.”

“It’s the truth.”

I took a warm tortilla chip from the platter in the middle of our table, the granules of salt coating my fingertips, and stabbed it through the cheesy crust, loading it with a generous bite of gooey dip. I shoved it in my mouth and as I chewed, a flash of more early memories of Vance went through my mind. What he’d said made sense.