Page 72 of The Friend Zone

“Oh come on, Cole. I get it if you’re nervous. I’m nervous too, believe me. But aside from our recent communication problems, we’ve never lied to each other. Please let’s not start now.”

It’s my turn to be confused. “What do you mean? I’m not lying. I actually had to put my pride to the side to tell you this. I just don’t want to let you down and you to think that I’m bad at this. All I need is for you to give me a few minutes if I fuck up the first time.” I say, confident that I can rock her world.

Her blonde eyebrows furrow. “Yeah, and I get that. But you don’t need to lie about not having been with anyone in a long time. You’ve brought a date to every party we’ve been to this year. I know you always hook up with your dates, Cole. But that was before. You don’t need to lie, I’m not jealous about your past. Or at least I’ll do my best not to be.”

I love the possessive glint in her eyes and usually I’d tease her about being jealous. However it’s time to come clean. Bay needs to know just how much I love her. How obsessed with her I’ve really been.

“I haven’t hooked up with anyone since I realized that my feelings for you weren’t just friendship.”

She still doesn’t get it. “So you just literally realized it? Like, this week?”

“Bay,” I sigh. “Remember the first time you had a huge fight with your ex and you came to my room?”

Bay nods. “Yeah of course. I should have slept over with Topher but he decided to be an ass. We ended up watchingmovies all night and I spent the night. We had so much fun that Netflix and chill became our regular thing, whether we stayed in your room or mine.”

I take her hand, guiding her to the huge California king sized bed. “Yeah, snuggling with you without getting a boner was the hardest thing ever. Pun totally intended.”

She giggles. “I pretended not to notice your morning wood. I knew it’s a natural thing, it didn’t have anything to do with me.”

She’s so fucking wrong. “Oh, no. It had everything to do with you, baby. I told you I had been low key crushing on you at the beginning of freshman year. I never stopped thinking that you’re hot and once we started hanging out, I found out that you were also cool. How easy it was to be with you, how much fun we had. At first I thought it was just confused. I wasn’t used to being friends with hot girls. With time I realized that it was a lot more. That I wanted more than just snuggling with you watching movies or being your shoulder to cry on every time your ex behaved like an asshole.”

Bay doesn’t look convinced. “Yeah, that’s when I started realizing that I might have feelings for you too. But it doesn’t change the fact that you still kept sleeping around. Like I said, I don’t have any rights to judge you or to be jealous. I just don’t understand why you’re lying about it now.”

This isn’t going how I was hoping. This relationship stuff is harder than I thought. By now I should be balls deep inside Bay, but I need her to know just how deep my feelings for her run.

“Bay, I’m not lying now. But I’ve been lying all this past year.”

She sits on the plush comforter. “I’m confused.”

I come clean. “Topher invoked that bro-code recently but that wasn’t the first time he had an issue with our friendship. He confronted me after that first sleepover and he told me clearly to stay away from his girlfriend. I mean, for all I knew mine couldhave been just a little crush. Or a totally one sided thing. I wasn’t going to come between you and your boyfriend.”

She doesn’t say anything, her forehead still creased as she listens to my explanation.

“I thought whatever, you know? Nothing had to change and Topher would back off once he saw me hooking up with other girls. The problem was that I quickly realized that I had no interest whatsoever in anyone who wasn’t you, Bay. God knows I fucking tried. The first time I took a girl to my room after a party, everything felt so mechanical. As if I was going through the motions or following a playbook drill on the ice. I couldn’t even get hard that night. I knew it wasn’t a physical problem because I had no issues getting hard when I thought about you.”

That puts a smile on Bay’s face. “Really? Did you come thinking about me?”

I would have never admitted it before, but now I have nothing to lose. “Fuck, baby. More fucking times than I can count. In fact, that’s the only sex I’ve had since our first sleepover.”

Maybe she’s starting to understand. “But what about all the girls? Sometimes you took two girls to your room.”

We said no more secrets, so I admit it. “It was just to keep up appearances and to throw both you and Topher off the scent of my real feelings. I never touched any of those girls. We would either play video games or if they had too much to drink, I would just provide a safe place to sleep it off. I just asked them not to tell anyone that nothing happened.”

CHAPTER 16

A MAN ON A MISSION

BAY

The way Cole is looking at me is everything.

Everything I’ve wanted for longer than I care to admit.

“Cole,” I murmur, taking his hand and pulling him down until he’s sitting by my side on Lakyn’s gigantic guest bed. “I had no idea. I thought you were happy hooking up with a different woman every weekend. It never occurred to me that it was just a front.”

He scoots closer, taking me into his arms until I’m practically sitting on his lap. “You had a boyfriend, Bay. Even if I had told you how I felt, I doubt it would have made a difference. You aren’t the cheating type.”

Cole isn’t wrong. “I started to realize that my feelings for you weren’t just friendship around the same time,” I confess. “I was in denial about Topher’s dark side and about not being as happy with him as I told myself and the rest of the world. But you’re right. I wouldn’t have cheated or broken up with him just because I felt attracted to you. Whether you had told me how you felt, I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt Topher.”

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