Page 70 of Silver Lining Love

“What about your girlfriends? In high school?”

“I didn’t have any girlfriends in high school.”

“You didn’t?” she asked, sounding shocked.

I glanced over at her. “You seem surprised.”

“I just…I saw your high school pictures today and you werehot.”

“You think I’m hot?” I teased.

Our relationship had changed so much over the past months. Before the kids moved in, Whitney used to bereallyflirty. I never did anything about it, because I had no plan to act on my attraction. But now I had to admit, I missed flirty Whitney.

“I said youwerehot,” she clarified. “Inhigh school.”

The corners of my mouth turned up in a grin. I loved seeing her playful banter coming back.

“Seriously though,” She turned toward me. “How come you didn’t have any girlfriends?”

“I didn’t want to get stuck here.”

She nodded and turned so she was looking out the window again. I wasn’t sure what I’d said to change the atmosphere in the truck but there’d definitely been a shift. And not a good one.

Neither of us said anything for the rest of the drive. After I pulled up to my “secret spot” which was a hidden area that I’d discovered on the south side of lake one day when I was out riding my bike, I shut off my engine and cut the lights. When I did the full moon lit up the surface of the dark water causing it to shimmer like it was sprinkled with a million diamonds.

“Oh my gosh!” Whitney sat up straighter and leaned forward. “It’s so beautiful.”

“Yes, it is,” I replied, staring directly at her.

She turned toward me and grinned a grin that told me she didn’t think I was being serious. I could tell that these past few months had robbed her of the confidence I used to see in her. I needed her to know how I saw her.

“You’re so beautiful, sometimes I forget to breathe when I look at you.”

Her smile dropped and her lips parted. A blush rose on her cheeks and her chest was rising and falling in shorter breaths. The air between us was crackling with intensity. I wasn’t sure she was ready to hear what I had to say, but I knew this was the time to tell her.

“I knew you were special from the second I saw you. I tried to deny that I felt anything for you. I did everything I could to ignore my feelings for you. But the truth is, that day in my driveway almost six years ago, I fell a little bit in love with you. And now it’s not a little bit. I’m in love with you. Totally and completely. I’ve never loved anyone the way that I love you.”

I wanted to continue but the stunned expression on her face made me pause. She didn’t at all look like a woman who was relieved to hear that the man that she’d loved for years loved her back. She looked like a woman who never expected to hear that her neighbor was in love with her.

It looked like this might be the one time that Dolly Briggs had got it wrong.

31

WHITNEY

“Love is like a stomachache; it doesn’t show up in x-rays, but you know it’s there.” ~ Gamma Mary

I blinked several times as I stared at Wyatt. His face was illuminated by the moonlight shining through the window. I was trying not to be distracted by his strong jaw peppered with stubble or his dreamy milk chocolate eyes that had a way of looking at me that made all thoughts disappear from my head.

Had he just said what I thought he had?

Had he just said that he loved me?

I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined what I’d just heard. I’d had a hard lemonade that Destiny offered me at the Movies in the Park. Maybe I was so much of a lightweight now that I was drunk and my mind was playing tricks on me.

“What?” I asked, needing to verify the data my cochlea was sending to my brain.

Wyatt grinned. His sexy half-grin made my stomach do more somersaults than the entire Olympic gymnastics team. “I said I love you, Whitney. I don’t expect you to say anything or to feel the same. I know that life is complicated and?—”

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