Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) - Karen Rose Page 0,179

shook his head, unable to keep the smile from his face. “I need to say a few things. I need you to hear me.”

She drew a breath and let it out, then sat back on his lap. “All right. I’m listening.”

“You said that you’ve . . .” He felt his cheeks heat, and his eyes narrowed because she was grinning at him like the spitfire she was. “What?” he demanded.

She swept her thumbs over his cheeks. “You’re blushing. It’s sweet.”

He rolled his eyes. “I am not sweet.”

“Oh, okay. You are mean.” She folded her hands in her lap, demurely waiting. Except for her eyes, which danced with an amusement that he hadn’t seen in a very long time.

I love you. He startled, not sure when “wanting her” and “longing for her” had become “loving her.” But the words were true. He knew it as well as he knew his own name. But he held the three words back. Not yet. He needed to say other things first. Important things.

“You said that you’ve loved me since you were seventeen.”

She abruptly sobered, his intent finally seeming to register. “I did.”

“I . . .”

She smiled ruefully. “You don’t have to say it, Tom. I’d rather you wait until you know it’s true than just say words back to me.”

“But that’s just it. I have loved you that long.”

Her smile dropped away, her expression instantly wary. “But?”

“It wasn’t like yours. Not then. Then, when I was twenty and you were seventeen, I knew I liked you. I knew I felt something for you.” He huffed an awkward laugh. “I wanted you?”

A new smile bloomed. Sheer delight. “You did? Back then?”

“I did. But you were seventeen and you were grieving and I would never have taken advantage of you that way.”

She traced his lower lip with her fingertip. “I know. But I have to say that knowing you wanted to is an ego boost.”

He winced. “I never meant to make you feel . . . less.”

“I know that, too.” She drew a deep breath and braced her shoulders. “And then?”

“Then you joined the army and I was pissed off.”

“I remember that.”

“You were eighteen and I’d planned something . . .” He felt himself blushing again, his embarrassment made worse by the way she was watching him with wide eyes.

“Something?” she prompted. “Something . . . sexual?”

“God,” he groaned. “Yes. I figured you were eighteen and I was still twenty and that I wasn’t going to be a pervert if I made a move. But then you said you were going away. That you’d already signed up. You didn’t tell me you were planning to do that.”

That final sentence came out more accusingly than he’d wanted it to. She winced now. “I’m sorry. If I’d known . . .”

“Yeah, well,” he grumbled. “I figured that you wouldn’t have done that if you’d felt anything, so I stowed it. Told myself we were friends. That you were like my sister.”

She looked horrified. “Shit.”

He laughed. “I never managed to convince myself of the sister part.”

“That’s good, at least. But the friend part stuck, huh?”

“It did. When you’d come home on leave, it was hard. I was hard,” he said ruefully. “I’d have to leave the room and go off by myself and say, ‘Just a friend,’ over and over until I was ready to come back out and be . . . well, presentable.”

She grinned again, her gaze dropping to his groin, where he was still hard as a rock and raring to go. “Oh? And did those moments alone involve anything else? Like . . . y’know, relief? And are you almost done talking?”

“Behave, brat.” He shook his head, but fondly. “When I was closer to twenty, yes, those little getaways sometimes involved me getting relief. As I got older, I got better at keeping you compartmentalized in the ‘friend’ box in my brain.”

She was serious again. “You’re good at compartmentalizing your emotions,” she murmured. “That’s how you survived an abusive father. I get that.”

For a moment he could only stare. Then he chided himself for being so surprised. She’d always known him better than anyone else. “I think you’re right.”

“The distance didn’t help. You graduated and got drafted to Boston and I was deployed.”

“I worried about you all the time,” he confessed. “Those Skype calls were some of the only times I thought I could breathe.”

“And the other times?”

“When I was on the basketball court. In front of a crowd. Then everything else went away. But