Always For You (Always Love Book 1) (23 page)

“W
E NEED TO TALK.”

I didn’t move, didn’t turn around from my seat on the small porch. I’d heard the kitchen door and knew Smith was coming to find me, but I hadn’t looked at him yet, mostly because I was afraid I might break down if I did.

I hadn’t fallen asleep for a long time last night. I was an old pro at faking sleep, thanks to years of needing to convince my siblings that I hadn’t woken up yet in the hopes they’d leave me alone. I’d kept my eyes shut and my breathing even when I felt Smith climb into bed and spoon against me. Every part of me had wanted to turn toward him and snuggle into his arms, burying my face in his chest.

But I knew without a doubt that insanity lay in that direction. What had just happened was bad enough; I’d opened up, let him in and now I had to work hard to protect myself again. I needed that night to pull myself together again.

Making love with Smith—because from where I stood, that’d been what we’d done—had been the most beautiful experience of my life. My sex life was embarrassingly limited, and I was sure I hadn’t been anywhere near as adventurous as he might’ve hoped. I knew my fumbling touch was probably boring. Still, he’d been kind. Attentive. Sweet, as Smith always was.

But this morning, I needed to be cool. I had to let him know that I didn’t have any expectations, I wasn’t going to make any demands—we could still be friends. Sometimes stuff like this happened, and we were both adults—we could rise above it.

I’d slept fitfully for a few hours and then as soon as the sun rose, I’d gotten up, made coffee and come out here on the porch to gather my thoughts.

And now here was Smith, standing on the step to my porch, shirtless, his feet bare, jeans hanging low on his hips. God help me, the top button was undone. Now that I knew what was under those jeans—and I was willing to bet the farm that his boxers were still inside on my bedroom floor—it was even harder to keep my mind from wandering in bad directions.

“We need to talk.” He repeated the words, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.

“No, we really don’t.” I shifted in my comfortable wicker rocker, tucking my feet beneath me. I kept my eyes fastened on the scarecrow that stood in my neighbor’s garden. “It’s okay, Smith. You don’t need to make this a big deal.”

“I’m not making it a big deal. It
is
a big deal.” He climbed up the step, moving so that he was in my line of sight. “Reen, we made love last night. Everything changed.”

“But it doesn’t have to.” I tried on the bright, carefree smile I’d been working on since I woke up. “Why should it?”

“Because everything is different. Because we were both fucking honest with each other, finally. After all these years of pretending, last night was most real we’ve ever been.”

I swallowed over the rising lump in my throat. “Smith, last night—I was out of control. I don’t know what happened to me or why I acted that way. I guess we’ll have to call it temporary insanity. But you just happened to be the one who intercepted me in the middle of the crazy, and I guess one thing led to another.”

“Wait a minute. I just happened to be the one who intercepted you? Are you saying if you’d run into someone else—say, if Tim the No Spark Wonder happened to be here when you got home—then you’d have spent last night fucking him?”

I felt my cheeks warm. “No, I—um.” Of course that wouldn’t have happened. The very thought made me feel slightly queasy. But would I be better to let Smith think it might have? “I just mean that if you hadn’t been here, I probably would’ve had a good cry, drunk a beer and gone to bed to sleep it off. So I’m sorry you got sucked into my drama.”

Smith leaned over my rocking chair, one hand on either side of me, his face level with mine. “Don’t bullshit me, Maureen. You were with me, every single damn second last night. And I told you—I said it before I even kissed you—that I’m in—”

“
Don’t
.” I ground out the single word. “Don’t say it. I pushed you into a corner where you had to say—what you did to make me feel better. And I get it, and I appreciate what a good friend you are. But last night . . . it was a mistake. We’re friends, Smith, and we don’t want to mess that up, right? We’re partners. One night of sex doesn’t have to change that.”

“You can just stop that right there.” He rocked my chair forward until my mouth was close to his. “Because you know it’s nonsense, Reen. So you can sit there and refuse to listen to me, refuse to believe that every word—every single fucking word I said last night was the God’s honest truth, refuse to believe that what I said was
my
truth and your truth. You can ignore me now, you can ignore me forever, but it’s not going to change how I feel.”

“You just felt sorry for me last night.” It was my deepest fear, and somehow, I’d spoken it. It was what had kept me from making my feelings for him known back in college, the terror that Smith Harrington, as awesome and sweet and wonderful as he was, would find out that I harbored a serious crush on him, and out of pity, he’d take me out. I knew that if he ever found out how I felt, I’d never be able to believe that he returned my love.

“That’s a fucking pathetic lie, Maureen, and if you stop and think for a minute, you’ll know that it’s not true. I’ve never felt sorry for you once in all the years we’ve known each other.”

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand to see the blazing passion on his face, because if I looked too long, I’d start to believe him. “We’ve been friends so long, Smith. Let’s not lose it over something silly like this.”

He laughed, and my eyes flew open, questioning. “Sorry, babe. That’s just—it makes me laugh, because giving up what we started last night because we’ve been friends? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And trust me, last night was not silly. Last night was . . .” He looked up, as though the words he needed were on the roof of the porch. “Honestly, the most beautiful, wonderful, sexy, perfect night of my life. It was so amazing that I can’t imagine not doing it again. Maybe every single night for the rest of my life. And some mornings and afternoons, too.”

A glimmer of something bright and shiny cut through the misery in my heart. “Smith.”

“Maureen.” He mimicked me, winking to take away any of the sting. Moving a few inches forward, he kissed the tip of my nose, and then before I could protest, he’d scooped me up into his arms and dropped into the rocker, holding me on his lap. I made a half-hearted, token struggle to get up, but he held me tight.

“No. Sit still, because you’re going to listen to me. And you’re going to listen with an open heart, believing that your friend Smith, the one you’ve trusted as long as you’ve known him, wouldn’t lie about something this big. Yes, Reenie, we’ve been friends for a long time. And yes, I love you as a friend. And right now, I need you to believe your friend wouldn’t lie to you.”

I gave a tiny nod.

“The day we met, moving into the dorms, and you nearly knocked me down the steps, I went upstairs to my room and told my roommate, ‘I just met a really cool girl.’ I knew even then, but I was an idiot freshman. I thought I had to play the field, be cool, meet all the girls.”

I made a little noise of derision. “That didn’t seem to be a problem for you.”

He sighed. “I was eighteen years old. I was a horn dog. There were girls, and—yeah, I was an idiot.” He pressed his lips to the top of my head. “But then there was that all-nighter before the English exam. Do you remember that? We were studying, and you fell asleep.”

I did remember. The chance to spend all night with Smith, even if it was just in the library, had been an opportunity I wasn’t going to pass up. It still stood out to me as one of my favorite college memories. “I did not fall asleep.”

“Oh, you so did. I know because I sat there and watched you sleep, with your head on your arms. And it was right then and there that I started to fall in love with you.”

I froze, afraid to move. “You did?”

Smith nodded. “I did. And I wanted to say something, but we were about to leave for Christmas break, so I figured I’d ask you out when we got back. And then when I did, you said, sure and invited three other people to go with us. I thought that was your way of letting me down easy.”

I closed my eyes. “I was afraid—I was afraid you didn’t mean a date. I thought there was no way you’d ask me out on a date. Not me. I wasn’t like any of the girls you ever went out with.”

“Which was just one reason why I liked you. But that was what happened all the next three years. I’d convince myself you only wanted to be friends, then I’d catch you looking at me and think—maybe. Just maybe. But every time I started to believe and got enough balls to ask you out, something else would happen. It felt like our timing was always off.

“And then senior year, at the Epsilon party—”

“Oh, God, do we have to talk about that?”

He rubbed my arm. “I think we kind of do. I saw you that afternoon. You told me you weren’t going to the party, and then you were there. I caught sight of you, and I kept trying to find you. And when I did . . .” His voice trailed off.

“You saw me in the bedroom with that guy.”

“Troy Andrews.”

“Was that his name? God, I thought it was Tony.” I winced. “I was so drunk. And then you came in, and suddenly I wasn’t drunk anymore. I was sick. I couldn’t believe I’d had sex for the first time with some wasted frat boy.”

“It was your first time?” He dropped his head back. “Christ, Maureen. I had no idea. I only knew I’d seen you in the aftermath of being with Troy, and I decided that was the end of the dream. I figured we were only meant to be friends.”

“And I was so mortified that I could barely look you in the eye for months. I’d only done it because I saw you making out with that girl.”

“What girl?” Smith frowned.

“The tall skinny blonde with the big boobs. She had her hands in your hair, and you were kissing her.”

He shook his head. “I wasn’t making out with her. She kissed me. I was trying to push her away. Someone had just told me that you were at the party, and I wanted to look for you. She was the girl my mom had asked me to take out that night.”

I was quiet for a minute. “Did you ever think that maybe we just weren’t meant to be, Smith? All those near-misses, all those times we almost connected but didn’t? Maybe we’re star-crossed lovers.”

“No.” That one word was definite. “Maybe we weren’t meant to be together back then because we wouldn’t have appreciated it. Or each other. But Maureen, I’ve never stopped thinking of you. All it took was seeing you again to know that you’re the woman I’ve always wanted. Even Felicia knew it. That day when she broke our engagement, she told me that she felt my heart still belonged to someone else. She said, ‘Whenever you talk about your friend from Georgia, your eyes light up and your voice gets soft. You should go see her. See if there’s still a chance for you.’ So when you called a few months later and asked me about the partnership and the house? It seemed like maybe finally things were going to work out for us.”

“And I kept wishing and hoping, at the same time that I convinced myself that you only wanted to be my friend.”

“I do want to be your friend, Reenie, but I want to be more than that. I want to be the friend who can kiss you senseless, just because. I want to work with you, live with you, raise babies with you . . . I want to marry you and know that you’re mine forever. Only mine. I’ve loved you for so long. I’m crazy in love with you, and that’s never going to stop.” He tilted my chin up so that he could see my eyes. “Is there anything you want to say to me, Maureen Ann Evans?”

It was the moment of truth. I took a deep breath. “The minute I saw you on the steps that day in freshman year, I knew. You started to talk, and I fell in love a little. I told Lainey, I just met this guy, and I don’t think I need to see any other man for the next four years. He’s perfect.” I remembered that feeling, that high. The euphoria of a crush when it was new and everything felt possible. “But then I found out you were popular, and you had that whole group of friends. I was totally intimidated. I heard a lot of rumors about you dating a ton of girls, and I thought I’d never have a chance.”

“I was just waiting for you to give me a sign I had a chance. None of those girls were ever serious. They weren’t interested in anything long-term, and they knew I wasn’t.”

“And then the Epsilon party happened, and then grad school—and you went to England.”

“I did.” He nodded. “I was pretty sure you and I had missed our chance by that time, and being on the campus, seeing you every day, was just killing me. I figured putting an ocean between us might help. By the time I came back, you were down here.”

“I kept hoping you might come down and see me.”

“You never invited me.”

“I was afraid you’d say no. Or that if you did say yes, it would only be because—”

“I felt sorry for you.” He finished for me and shook his head. “I don’t get it, Maureen. You’re so confident most of the time, but when it came to our friends or me, you acted like we were doing you a favor letting you hang out with us. I never understood how you could feel that away. Everyone loved you.”