Page 47

Crossing her arms, she licks her lips. My dick takes note. It’s fucked up, right, that I’m imagining how she’d taste? The salt and the heat? The softness and the need I’d sense when I’d slant my mouth over hers and kiss her hard, the kind of kiss that’d tell her everything I can’t say?

This is totally crossing a line.

Reese and I . . . it’s not okay for me to have these thoughts—I have to—

Lucy whines, and I realize I’m squeezing her between my arm and side.

“Aw, little Lu, I’m sorry.” I bend down to gently set her on the floor. She curls up—where else?—at Milly’s feet. On the way back up, I give my jeans a quick tug, hoping Milly doesn’t see my half chub. But then I lock eyes with Milly again, and I realize I don’t know what to do with my hands now that they’re empty. Feels dangerous.

Her gaze flicks down my body as I shove my hands into my front pockets. Moving her gaze back up, it lands on my lips for half a heartbeat before meeting mine.

The space between us swells.

I am fucked.

“I don’t think you’re wrong,” Milly says with a sniffle. “But since we’re being brutally honest, I’ll say that part of me wanted to keep you entirely to myself. You were mine in a way nothing else ever was. My brothers always had football. Their teams, their games, all that stuff. I spent so much time on the sidelines watching them play the game they loved. They were part of something special, which was cool, but I wanted to be a part of something special too. And then I met you, and I finally felt it—that sense of belonging, that thing. It lit up my life. It felt so special and also so fragile that I didn’t want to share it with anyone else. I wanted to keep you to myself for as long as I could, because I knew at some point the world would come in and change everything, and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing what we had. Losing you. Because even though that dumbass feud is technically over, I know our families wouldn’t love sitting down to Christmas dinner together.”

She’s not wrong. I cringe when I think about my dad coming up to Blue Mountain. Knowing him, he’d figure out how to run an underground gambling ring at the resort that would ultimately bankrupt us or lead to an FBI investigation that’d take down our family and the Beauregards too.

Still, her confession knocks the wind out of me. My pulse marches in my ears. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me, Milly?”

“Because I was a coward. I was selfish and just—yeah, a total idiot, and I’m sorry about that. I really am. I think all the time—” She swallows, shaking her head sadly as she looks down and toes at the rug in front of the sink. “I think about how much I regret not telling you these things. I wonder if you would’ve stayed if I’d told you. If I’d treated you better.”

“Don’t,” I say through gritted teeth. “Don’t you dare say that. I’m the one who left. If anyone was a shithead, it was me.”

“You were a shithead.” She looks back up. Tears leak down her cheeks and land on her sweater. “You still are a shithead for not telling me the real reason you walked out.”

My God, I want to tell her. I want to lay it all out, hold nothing back. I want to see her reaction and hear what she’ll say.

I want to have her on my side again.

She’s right to push me. She’s right not to settle for bullshit. It’s one of the things I adore most about her.

With a grunt, I turn to the sink and yank my hands out of my pockets, curling them around the sink’s porcelain lip.

“Some things need to stay buried,” I manage, staring down at the drain. “Please, Milly, trust me on this.”

“No. You need to trust me.”

“Trust you?” I shoot her a glance over my shoulder. “Why would I do that after you just admitted to however many lies of omission?”

She blinks several times, eyes lost and scared, and I grip the sink so tightly I’m worried it will crack. She needs to be comforted. She needs to be touched. But I can’t be the man to do it.

“I’m trying to make this right, Nate.”

“Oh? And what else are you trying to do?” I don’t know what I’m searching for with that question. Do I want her to confess that she’s pushing me, that she wants me to turn around and take her in my arms and taste her? It’d be a hell of a convenient way to assuage my own guilt about those thoughts, making Milly guilty too.