Page 116 of Blade

“Do you have a problem with that?” She glared, arms crossed over her chest, waiting for my answer.

“No, as long as he’s not sleeping with you, I don’t give a fuck who he has sex with.”

And that was true.

It shocked me, was all.

Shaking my head, I cleared my thoughts of Michael the gay stepbrother and got back to the matter at hand.

“My point was, I didn’t know he was gay, or your stepbrother. I thought you were happy. I thought you had moved on. It pissed me off you had moved on. I know you thought I was dead, and I recognize that made me an asshole, but it is what it was,” I bellowed, stretching my arms out at my sides.

“And the other times? Once you knew I hadn’t moved on? That my life sat on pause because of you? That I still hadn’t accepted you were gone? What about then?”

I stood there looking at her. How could I tell her this? What would she think? I dropped my head, looking at my feet.

I took a deep breath.

In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

“I was scared.” Looking up at her, her mouth had dropped open. “I know it was stupid, but I wasn’t him anymore. I had changed. Everything in my life, from leaving WITSEC to joining the Shadows, had changed me.”

I put my hands in my pockets, not knowing what else to do with them as she stood there, waiting.

“At first, I stupidly thought I could keep you from ever finding out. I realized quickly that I wasn’t the only one who had changed. You were so different from the girl I knew. I thought maybe I could just be Blade, and you would let go of Micah and just want me for who I was now.”

She walked toward me slowly. “When did that change?”

I looked up at her and smiled.

“When you handed King his ass after he called you a little girl. Right after you walked out the door, I told themthat was the Becca I fell in love with.”

Her eyes widened with that confession.

“What?” she whispered, barely audible through the wind.

“I love you, Becca. Have for a long time. I wanted to tell you everything last week when I brought you up here. This place was always where we could say anything to each other. When you poured your heart out to me, telling me everything you felt when we were kids, I pussied out. I couldn’t bear for you to hate me.”

Now it was my turn to pace back and forth.

“The longer I kept quiet, the harder it became to find the words to tell you the truth. Ryder and Rachel both came at me.”

“That day at The Coffee Shop,” she confirmed.

“Yea. Rachel, well, I think she changed the most out of all of us. She has quite a right hook.”

“What? Rachel hit you?”

“Three times.” I snorted.

Becca put her hand over her mouth, trying, unsuccessfully, to hide her laughter.

“Yea, I didn’t realize you hadn’t seen that. I wasn’t sure when you had walked back out. Please, believe me. I never wanted you to find out like that, in front of everyone. I planned to tell you that morning, and then we overslept.”

“The part I have the most trouble with is you had sex with me, letting me believe you were someone else.” She wrapped her arms around her waist like she was cold.

“I told you my real name. It just wasn’t the one you knew me by.”

She looked up and glared at me.

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