Page 17 of Fierce-Matt

How could you take back the truth?

She’d been taken advantage of way too much in her life. It not only added stress but hurt her feelings and hammered her confidence into the ground.

“I’m sorry for what I did in my youth. I had no idea you felt that way. I wish I had.”

She was stunned he was apologizing. Sincerely apologizing, one of his hands dropping on top of hers in a soft caress.

Not the guy that secretly called himself Mighty Matt when no one was around.

She’d only known because she’d overheard him talking to himself in the mirror in his room one night when she’d spent the night.

She’d left Phoebe’s room to go to the bathroom and heard Matt’s voice across the hall.

Stupid secret crush and curiosity of a fourteen-year-old had her peering into the crack left by his partially closed door.

Sixteen-year-old shirtless Matt had haunted her dreams for years.

Not always in a good way either.

“I doubt it would have made you stop.”

His lips were almost invisible as they pressed together in thought. The old Matt would have blurted something stupid out. “Do you have that poor of an opinion of me?” he asked. His voice was quieter than it’d been.

Dare she say he looked hurt by her words?

She hadn’t thought that was possible, but she didn’t want to be responsible for making someone feel the way she’d felt so much in her life.

She’d be honest. “I used to.” She shrugged. “I don’t know you now.”

She’d changed—maybe he had too. There was nothing wrong with giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Holding onto old feelings hindered new ones.

Her hand was waving up and down in front of him in his fancy suit. He didn’t look like the kid that made her secretly cry when she got home from Phoebe’s house.

He always boasted he was going to be an attorney.

Phoebe said the same, but she hadn’t bragged or boasted about it as Matt had.

Anya always felt stupid around Matt, but never Phoebe. Her best friend didn’t make her feel less than someone else.

Anya had always wanted to be like other people, comparing and trying to measure up, but she often fell short.

“I’m the same guy,” he said.

“If you were, you wouldn’t be sitting here talking to me calmly. You would have come up from behind me and startled me into throwing my lunch in the air until it landed on the ground leaving me nothing to eat on my break.”

He stared into her eyes and exhaled. “That’s a dick move to do to a woman.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “There you go.”

“I might have done that to you as a kid, not as a woman. I’ve matured significantly in the last decade.”

“I believe your career has forced that on you.”

“It has,” he said, stealing another chip. “But that’s not the only place I’ve matured.”

She grinned at him stealing her lunch. A touch of the old him still there and it didn’t bother her for some reason.

“Apology accepted then,” she said. “If you’ve really changed, then I’m happy for the next person.”