Page 34 of A Taste of Chardonnay

“Check on what?” I cut him off. “There’s nothing to check on. We’re snowed in. We can’t go outside, and everything we need is right here. So why don’t you just be honest?”

“What are you rattling on about?”

“Forget it.” I pulled the blanket tight around my shoulders, grabbed the bottle of wine—fuck the glass—and Kindle, and stomped away. I should have known better than to expect him to have a genuine conversation.

I got to the stairs, and the lights flickered, halting me in place.

“Still afraid of the dark?” he asked my retreating back. “Thought you would have grown out of that by now.”

He couldn’t talk to me about anything, yet he could remember things from when we were kids. Things that no one other than him and my siblings knew. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He thought he still knew me. He didn’t.

“I’m not afraid. I’m just in heels and there are a lot of stairs. I want to be able to see where I’m going.”

“Don’t want to miss a step and fall.”

“Exactly. I could break a bone, and I’d have no way to get to the hospital.”

“I’d get you there.” His words were a grumble, and I wasn’t sure I heard him right.

“What?”

“Nothing. The lights are still on. You can continue.” He turned from me.

I pivoted, ready to go up the stairs and lock myself in my office, but I was so tired of storming off. Tired of acting like he didn’t jab me every chance he got but then would drop subtle niceties that had me questioning my own sanity.

I put my Kindle and the bottle of wine on the stairs and threw the blanket off me. He said he didn’t hate me, so why the hell did he act like he did? He’d been a dick to me for years, making me question what the heck it was that I did, especially because I once thought he didn’t hate me at all.

“I thought at one point you might have…likedme. Foolish. I know.” Heat crept up my neck and into my cheeks, but it had to be said. I’d been holding that in for damn near twenty years.

“I did.” Low and deep, but clear as day.

My head snapped up, meeting his gaze. “What?”

“I had a huge crush on you.”

I knew it!After all this time, I got the confirmation I had always known to be true. But the victory of the confirmation quickly died. If he had a crush on me then… “Then what the hell happened?” It was like a switch had been flipped, and I had no idea why. It had clawed at me for years after until I just accepted that we would forever be enemies.

“Why does it matter?”

It mattered. More than he realized. “Because after your dad kicked you out, you became such an asshole to me.” The nice boy who would walk me to homeroom, carry my books if I had too many, and would ask me about my day had vanished, leaving behind someone I didn’t even recognize. He was mean and argumentative. Always picking on me and starting fights.

“He put me to the curb just like the trash I am.”

Pain seared my heart, hearing him speak so horribly of himself. His dad was trash for the way he had treated him, but Brady never belonged in that category. He had to know that. “What are you talking about? You’re not trash.”

“Iheardyou.” His voice boomed through the tasting room, and I stumbled back. “Talking to Jocelyn that morning at school. You told her I was trash.”

Realization slammed into me. My heart stuttered in my chest, and every regret I ever had was nothing in comparison to how I felt in this moment. “Oh God, Brady. I am so sorry.” He wasn’t supposed to hear that conversation. If I had known he was there, I wouldn’t have said anything. I would have kept my mouth shut.

“It’s fine. I was trash, thanks to my old man.”

“No!” I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight, needing him to focus on me, needing him to understand. “Damn it. I fucked that up so bad.” I blinked and caught his piercing green eyes. “Jocelyn was trash, and she told me she wanted to try to get with you. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to protect you from her. So I made her think you were the trash, because at the end of the day, all Jocelyn cared about was her image.”

Brady’s brows pulled together, skepticism flickering in his green eyes, but there was something else beneath it—something almost hopeful. “You were protecting me?”

“Yeah, I was. Or at least… I thought I was. If I’d known it would have turned into you hating my guts for the next twenty years, I would have just let her sink her fake nails into you.” I would have been insanely jealous, but Jocelyn would have eventually moved on. I could have been there to pick up the pieces of the aftermath. But I was too afraid to see him with someone else. Too afraid she would use him and hurt him like she had so many others. He’d already gone through so much at such a young age. He deserved someone better than Jocelyn.

“All this time,” he said under his breath, catching my gaze with an intensity that had me backing up and swallowing.

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