He leaned forward onto the table, leveling me with a stern look. When he didn’t speak for a moment, I lifted my eyes up to his face and realized that was what he’d been waiting for—my full attention.
“If there’s one thing I know for certain about you, Blaire, it’s that you don’t need saving.”
And there was something in the way he said it that sent shock waves into my groin. Like, he was proud of that fact. Like, that was part of the reason he kept coming back.
“Then why bother?” I challenged.
Furnishing my apartment, cooking my meals, checking in on me—none of it was typical behavior for a landlord.
His eyes widened, and he gaped at me like I was dense. It took me back to all those years I spent being regarded like the stupid, naive girl everyone in Beacon Grove thought me to be. I was used to it from them by now, but seeing that expression on his face took me by surprise. I had thought that out of anyone else, Kyle saw past that. He was willing to treat me like a human, not a punching bag.
Or so I thought.
“We’re friends,” he said, slowly shaking his head like he didn’t understand how I couldn’t see that. “That’s what people do when they care about each other.”
Friends.
Friends didn't look at each other the way I caught him doing to me. They didn't think about each other as they pleasured themselves the way I did, night after night.
That was why it bothered me so much to think he pitied me, I think. Because whatever was happening between us was anything but friendship.
And I may have been wrong, but I think Kyle felt the same way. Even as he said the word, his mouth tilted down in a disbelieving frown.
“Don't act like that.”
“Like what?” I pouted.
“Like all this time we've spent together doesn't equate to a friendship. It might be sad to say, but you're probably one of the only people in this town that I know I can trust.”
My cheeks heated at the compliment. I couldn't help it. I loosened my arms from my chest and lifted my fork to begin eating again.
“I trust you, too,” I mumbled, embarrassed at my outburst.
A smug smile pulled at his lips as he grabbed his own fork. We continued our meal in a comfortable silence as all the awkwardness in the air slowly disappeared, and then finished the evening off as we always did these days—together.