Page 132 of Attached At Heart
“Blake.”
She said my name on a shaky exhale.
I turned to face her. God, she was gorgeous. Every day, she was gorgeous, but tonight, she had a blue, flowy blouse on that made her look like a summer angel. It brought out the color in her eyes and the sparkle of the ring on her finger. “Lane. Is everything okay?”
She nodded, pressing her lips together and stopping about a foot away from me.
“I owe you,” she said. “For everything. Everything about tonight.”
I shook my head, tired of thisowing meshit. Couldn’t she see that this wasn’t transactional for me? She meant the world to me, and I’d always do anything and everything that I could for her. “How many times do I have to tell you? You don’t owe me anything.”
“But that was…” She sighed and threw up her hands. “You were right.”
That hadn’t been what I’d expected her to say. “I was right?”
Her lips twitched. “Don’t make me say it again.”
“Oh, I definitely want to hear you say it again,” I said, the corner of my mouth tugging upward. “I waswhat, Delaney?”
She flicked her eyes up in mock annoyance. “Right. You were right.”
I lifted a brow. “About what?”
“About how convincing you could be.” She bit down on her lip, avoiding looking directly at me. “That you would convince them. At least, I’m pretty sure you did. Even though my mom says they still have to talk about it.”
My smile faltered despite the good news.
“It was…really convincing, Blake,” she breathed, so soft that her voice almost got carried away in the wind. “That story that you told. With the ring.”
Sighing, I raked a hand through my hair.
So she still thought it was just a story.
Fuck if I wasn’t done with the pretense.
“There’s a reason for that.”
“A reason?” she repeated.
“For why it was convincing.”
Because it was all true.
Delaney blinked at me like she couldn’t comprehend what I was implying. Like those exact puzzle pieces just didn’t fit together. As though me being in love with her for more than a decade was not something she had ever considered possible.Stilldidn’t consider possible.
“What’s the reason, Blake?” she whispered, almost like she was afraid of the answer.
Little pieces of my heart were chipping away, falling to the pit of my stomach.
How could she still not see things for what they really were?
I truly thought that she’d been starting to realize the extent of our relationship, how it had always been more than we pretended it was. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe it would always be something that onlyIsaw.
“I don’t understand how it’s not obvious.” I looked down at my feet, shook my head, and sighed. “But of course it isn’t obvious to you. Of course you can’t imagine a world where maybe we’ve always been so much more than friends, Lane.”
Delaney remained quiet, and I was terrified of what expression I would find on her face when I looked back at her. So I glanced up at the gray sky instead, wondering if it was going to open up on us. The mood felt right.
Her silencehauntedme. But it was my fault. A relationship—arealrelationship—was something she had never wanted, and after years of considering that and keeping all my feelings to myself, I’d spilled them all out onto the dinner table. In front of her parents. On a night where she was already emotional and nervous.
