Page 37 of Blue Moon Love

I was a lot of things, but naïve wasn’t one of them. I knew exactly what his words were and, more importantly, what they were not.

Sam was a charming guy. A silver-tongued devil. A Casanova. He’d never turned his linguistic powers on me before, but it’s not like I hadn’t witnessed them in action. I knew he was only saying those things to me because he wanted to make me feel better as a penance for his betrayal. Or maybe he just felt sorry for me because I was a thirty-three, nearly thirty-four-year-old virgin.

Or maybe he actually meant it—a tiny voice piped up in the back of my head.

But I ignored that voice. If he actually believed everything he said about me, then why wouldn’t he want to be with me?

Maybe it was the same way I felt about Jonah. I saw all of his amazing qualities, but the spark, the I-want-to-rip-your-clothes-off, just wasn’t there when I looked at him. And maybe it wasn’t there when Sam looked at me.

If that were the case, then my situation was even more dire than I’d thought. I’d always assumed he just thought of me like a little sister. He loved my family, and they loved him. He was pretty much an unofficial Hale. But in the back of my mind, even if I hadn’t admitted it to myself, I was convinced that one day he’d look at me and see me as more than just his best friend, more than just Milo and Mason’s little sister. I thought it was going to be like in the movies when the nerdy girl takes off her glasses, shakes out her bun, and all of a sudden, the hero thinks she’s hot.

But if he already considered me hot—insanely hot, the epitome of the sexy girl next door—and he still wasn’t interested in me, then there was zero chance of that changing. The flickers of hope that my constant state of delusion had fanned for years were finally extinguished.

Tears began to pool in my eyes and then spill down my face as disappointment and maybe grief for a dream I’d held onto for far too long finally died inside of me. Instead of fighting against it or trying to pull myself together, I surrendered to despondency. I floated in the sea of sadness and didn’t fight against the waves of dejection, hopelessness, and melancholy. I willingly sank into the full Anne of Green Gables depths of despair.

I was mid-sob when my phone lit up on the nightstand with a notification from my Ring camera. I picked it up and saw that Sam was letting himself inside my house. He wasn’t supposed to spend the night tonight. He’d been cleared to climb stairs. He should be home. I could see from the sweats he was wearing that, clearly, he’d been home because he’d changed out of his jeans.

My heart started pounding wildly as I watched him disappear inside my home. Why was he here? Had he just gotten used to the couch? Had he forgotten his toothbrush?

When I heard his footsteps coming down the hall, I quickly wiped the tears from my face and pretended to be asleep. I turned on my side, facing the wall, pulled the blanket up to my chin, and closed my eyes.

The door opened, and I heard more footsteps before I felt the mattress dip as he lowered into bed next to me, just like he used to do when we were younger.

Several minutes passed, and I thought I was in the clear, that my fake-sleep ploy had worked, when he said, “I know you’re not sleeping.”

I could ignore him, but I didn’t see the point. “What are you doing here?”

“I figured on my last night here we could have a sleepover. For old time’s sake.”

“Last night was your last night here,” I countered as I heard Winnie’s collar shake out behind me as she left my feet, where she’d been sound asleep, to go and snuggle with Sam. Traitor.

“Winnie doesn’t want me to go.”

Neither do I; that’s the problem.

I sighed.

The mattress dipped again. Even though my back was facing him, I knew that he had turned on his side toward me. It was what he did when he wanted to talk. And I had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to talk about.

“Don’t,” I warned.

“Don’t what?”

“I already told you we’re not going to talk about it.”

“We have to.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I could hear the hurt in his voice. Everyone thought Sam Whitlock was this charming, handsome, easy-going, charismatic guy who could get any woman he wanted and that nothing ever bothered him. They assumed that with his reputation, he was Teflon, and nothing stuck to him. The opposite was true. He was very sensitive, and things hurt him. Deeply.

Even though I was going through my own shit right now, I would never want to actually hurt Sam. Yes, I was in love with him and had been since I was six. But I also loved him as my best friend, and I would die before I would ever hurt him intentionally.

With a sigh, I rolled over to face him. “I never told anyone.”

“No one?”

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