Page 7 of Hidden Confessions

I narrowed my eyes at him. It seemed too good to be true. “What about all the times you were glaring at me from your side of the office?”

His cheeks flushed red. I’d never seen him in this manner before. It was so not him. Spence was the cool, calm, collected type of person when I wasn’t busy annoying him.

“I wasn’t glaring . . . I was just . . . admiring you from afar.”

“Admiring me from afar.” I couldn’t help but chuckle. “You really need to work on how you look at people with admiration versus wanting them dead,” I said, earning me a scowl, which only made me want to press him further. “Well, what about the time you yelled at me in our meeting with the IDM investors?”

“Do you mean the meeting where we discussed last year’s quarterly earnings and the growing economic needs for the company with the merger?”

I nodded. That was the one. It was as though he’d had an agenda to tear me down in that meeting with the way he picked my presentation apart as if we were not from the same team. Hell, I’d had to bring all my cards to the table that day so I didn’t make an embarrassment of myself.

“I didn’t yell at you. I was trying to show the investors how good your presentation was and how passionate we were regarding the issue.”

I was completely baffled now. “How?”

“How?” he parroted. “I thought up every single counterpoint and argument they were probably going to bring up and did it in their place. I stayed up all night coming up with different scenarios. The manager wasn’t exactly happy, but hey, we landed the deal, didn’t we?”

“Oh my god, Spencer.”

“What?”

I shut my eyes for a brief second as I choked back a laugh. This whole time, we had made it more than obvious how much we disliked each other, driven by our assumption that we each hated the other.

Fucking kill me now.

“I always found you very fascinating. But there were roles to be played, I suppose, once you made it clear you didn’t like me. I never in a million years thought you would genuinely be... interested in me. You spent every minute at the office trying to bait me into an argument for goodness’ sake!” I sighed, frustration coming through in my words. I looked over at Spencer, who was giving me a glare that usually promised a fight.

I’d like it.

Normally.

But this moment wasn’t about fighting. Not anymore.

It was about the truth.

So I looked at him, ready to give him more. “I didn’t mind it, in all honesty—our bickering and tension—I was quite fond of it.”

Spencer gave me a skeptical look. I shivered as his eyes raked my body. His lips opened, and it took me a minute to register that he was talking. “No... you’re just messing with me now,”he said, shaking his head. He moved a step backward, clearly wanting to put some space between our bodies.

I held his gaze. “I don’t kiss men just to mess with them, Spencer.” In fact, kissing another person point blank wasn’t something I did, not unless I’d been dating them and had spent some time getting to know them. I definitely wasn’t the type of person who got overly involved with others, and I tended to keep my guard up.

Except with him. Spencer was different.

Spencer was always different.

“You don’t kiss men to mess with them. So you only annoy them in every way you can when you’re working with them?”

I didn’t want to play any more games. There was so much at stake here, now that we were airing our feelings out. I closed the gap between us.

“Nope. I only kiss men I like. I meant every word when I said I find you fascinating.”

His breath hitched, eyes rounded as they bored into mine.

I held his gaze, hoping he’d be able to sense my sincerity.

“So, to fully answer your question, I kissed you because I like you.” I let the words hang in the silence, letting the weight of what I was communicating sink into his head. “I don’t mean it as just simple liking.”

He swallowed. Nodded. “I know.”

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