Page 55 of Beneath the Blindfold

“I wouldn’t,” I said, but it came out weak. I had taken Tariq back before. Julius was right to be concerned I’d do it again.

“I was scared, okay? I didn’t want to hurt you. I should have thrown his ass out a long time ago. I’m fucking sorry I didn’t sooner.”

I straightened my posture in surprise. “You threw him out?” Julius’s friendship with Tariq had fallen apart, but I assumed it was the divorce and how Julius had sided with me. “Is this the reason you don’t talk to him anymore?”

He blinked slowly. “I don’t talk to him because of the way he treated you. He’s a selfish piece of shit, and he ain’t worth my time. If I wasn’t in love with you, I’d have stopped being friends with him a long time ago.”

My heart lurched to a halt. The sound in the restaurant dropped out altogether. “What?”

It rolled out of his mouth casually, but dropped on the table like a bomb. “I think you heard me.”

Love. . .? Words were a jumbled mess in my head. I couldn’t sort them out into sentences that made any sense, so I uttered the only thing I could remember how to say. “What?”

“No more secrets.” He wasn’t fazed by my repeated response. His expression was intense and too powerful to be anything other than pure truth. “I love you. I have for a while now.”

Finally, my mouth and brain could get it together. “How long?”

“About seven years.”

“Oh my God.”Oh my God!

“You know when I knew? We were at some party. You were standing in a crowded kitchen by the keg. T had gone to the bathroom or something, and left you with me. You remember it?” He didn’t give me time to process his question fully. Was he talking about the night we met? Julius’s eyes drifted upward for a moment as he recalled the memory. “This guy comes in, wearing a dinosaur costume. Wasn’t Halloween. No clue why he was wearing it.”

“Him and his friends always dressed up for the games,” I babbled, reeling from the revelation. “That way they’d get on the Jumbotron.”

“Oh, yeah.” Julius smiled. “People are giving him shit about it. Someone asks what he’s supposed to be, and he says he’s a lesbian. It was weird between you and me, cause we’d just met and T was MIA, so I was trying to make conversation, and asked if you thought the dinosaur guy looked like a lesbian. You said, yeah. That he looked like a—”

“Oh my God.” I blurted it out now, just as I’d done then. “Lick-a-lotta-puss. I was so drunk.”

His grin widened. “You went as red as the bow in your hair. It was so fucking cute, Court. I didn’t stand a chance.” The playful look faded back into his serious one. “But you were already with him, and I wasn’t gonna get in the way. I wanted you to be happy.”

It was a gut-punch right in my feels. What he wanted didn’t matter. He always put others first. The irony of it all was a hard lump to swallow. Being with Tariq hadn’t made me happy, but I suspected the opposite could be true of the man sitting across from me.

Julius was in love with me. Could I feel the same about him some day?

“Why did you tell me?” I asked. “I mean, about Tariq being a regular? I never would have found out if you hadn’t.”

“I want everything in the clear. Don’t want him to have anything to do with us.” His gaze clouded. “I know my club’s got a taste that isn’t for everyone, and what I do ain’t respectable. Still, the only time I ever felt dirty, was when he was there.”

His pained expression made me believe it, and what he was saying . . . he’d broken the trust between us to try to build it stronger.

“I’m sorry,” he started.

I shook my head. “No, I am. I’m sorry for what I said at the club, that getting on the table was a mistake. I was lashing out—”

His shoulders relaxed with a sigh of relief. “You don’t got to apologize.”

“I do, because it was a lie and I don’t want to lie to you. Nothing we did felt like a mistake.”

Emotions swirled inside me, twisting me up and making it hard to find the courage to put myself out there. My heart was fragile now. Not quite done with rehab, although the beautiful man across the table was doing all he could to help. He’d do anything for me, including telling me a difficult truth. And he’d been brave enough to say he loved me, not knowing if I’d ever return that love.

I remembered how it felt when we’d connected for the first time in a kiss. Not a mistake at all. I stared at him and filled my expression with longing. “Being with you felt . . . right.”

He’d been fast on the football field, but he moved so quickly, it hadn’t registered he’d left his seat until his mouth was on mine. His hands tangled in my hair as he bent over my chair, kissing me and not giving a fuck who was watching.

It put our previous passion to shame. I gripped the lapels of his jacket, tugging him closer as his lips slayed me.

“Jesus,” I whispered, echoing his word after our first kiss.

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