to know. And it’s not because I didn’t care. And it’s not because I’m afraid to say the honest thing. But I was afraid of leading you somewhere that I wanted you to go. But that was when I at least thought... I thought they knew you. At least. But they never did, did they?”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I want you,” he said. “That simple. I have. Since the first time I met you.”
She could not believe that those words had just come out of his mouth. With the hamburger on a plate in front of him. Not that the hamburger was incredibly relevant to the situation, it just kind of added to the absurdity of it. They’d been friends for years. And he never said anything. He never even indicated...
And all those feelings that she had the first moment she met him came flooding back.
But she... She suddenly felt so small and unworthy. She had never given a lot of thought to how she looked. Because she had a boyfriend for half of her life. She had never wanted to attract another man. She had always been so grateful for Dylan. She did what she could with what she had, but that was basically it. Laz was beautiful. There was no doubt about that. No argument to be made. Classically masculine and handsome in a way that took her breath away. But even in that moment when she’d first seen him she hadn’t given any thought to whether or not she could attract him, because why would she?
He had experience. Lots of different women, that much she knew. They didn’t talk about it, but it was implied in a lot of different conversations. She had Dylan. That was it. And an increasingly dull sex life that had waned entirely in the face of her increasingly bad insomnia.
And he hadn’t been too upset about it. And she hadn’t really known what to make of that. The fact that he had let her reduce their sex life to zero had begun to bother her. And it had turned into a sort of game where she tried to see if anything else would happen.
If she waited him out, if he would finally get fed up with it.
It had actually made her start to question her desirability. Something that she really hadn’t thought much about before.
But now she wondered. If she could actually be enough for a man like Laz. A man who had felt like fate from the moment she had first seen him. An impulse that she had denied because...
Well, she was used to denying her impulses. Used to questioning her instincts.
Because hadn’t she been told—by everything her parents had done, by everything they’d said—that she could not trust anything that she was inclined toward? Yes. She had been told that. And so when she had walked into the bar and seen Laz, known that he was the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on, felt like she was peering into a future that she wanted more than anything... She had questioned it. Absolutely and completely.
Maybe she shouldn’t have. Maybe that was the lesson. Above all else, maybe the lesson here was that she wasn’t always wrong. And there was a concern, of course, that if she closed the distance between them, their friendship might be ruined. But that moment when she had first laid eyes on him existed in a place inside of her that couldn’t be denied. It didn’t question anything. Because it knew exactly what it wanted. And had from the first moment she had ever seen him.
He had been there for her... He had been there for her. And so many ways over all that time. And she knew that closing the space between them could never break what they were.
She had built her foundation with Dylan on need. Not physical need, but an emotional need that had been very deep and very real. But her relationship with Laz wasn’t built on that. She had met him, and she had wanted to know him. She had found him easy to talk to. And she found him beautiful.
It was such a different thing. Such a different thing to want without feeling a sharp, fearful side to it. Without being worried that she might lose everything if she couldn’t give him what he wanted.
“You really want me?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice rough. “But he’s always been there. He’s always been in the picture, and...”
“You should have