“I will always be your friend, dummy. But … I love you as more than just a friend,” I confessed on a whisper, knowing I was opening a door that should have always stayed shut and kept tightly bolted, but with this guy, I had to be completely open with him.
He needed to know that I loved him before he could accept that what we felt for each other wasn’t dirty and wrong. His lashes flickered, but his eyes didn’t lose that shuttered look to them.
“I have for years now. Despite your flaws. Despite all the shit you think makes you unlovable. I still love you. Completely. Forever.”
“No, Kassa. You can’t. It’s … We can’t.”
“Why?” I demanded, my heart aching. “Give me one good reason why we can’t.”
He blew out a harsh breath and glared up at me. “Because I don’t do relationships. I just fuck and then I move on to the next chick. And you’re not the kind of girl I could do that with. If any other guy tried it with you, I would kill him. Do you honestly think I would allow myself to turn you into that kind of girl? That I want to hurt you like that?”
I stroked my thumb over his cheek, my heart cracking wide open. But I couldn’t hate him for it. He was right; that was exactly what he did. He was a one-and-done kind of guy. In all the years I had known he was sexually active, I had never seen him with the same chick twice. Hell, once, I had heard him joking around wit
h Kale and Sin about having more than one girl during the same night after a party when they had all been seniors in high school. Gray would never be the kind of guy to settle down and be faithful.
At least not yet. Maybe one day. Maybe not.
“Kas?”
I swallowed hard and then carefully lifted myself off him, trying to be strong after having handed him my heart and he basically told me that he didn’t want it. “I get it.”
“I love you, Kassa.”
Those words broke my heart a little more.
He sat up but didn’t stand. Instead, he just sat there on the floor, looking up at me as I dropped back down into my chair. “I just … I don’t think I could ever be in love with anyone.”
“Maybe you think that,” I murmured, holding my tears back so he wouldn’t see how ruined I was. “But, one day, you’ll find a girl who means everything and change your mind.”
But she wouldn’t be me.
I would have to live with that though. Have to move on and find a way to cope when he did find his “one” and I would be forced to watch him with her for the rest of our lives. Because I couldn’t give him up. If it was the only way I could have him, then I couldn’t let go of our friendship.
“Kassa, I don’t want this to change things. I don’t … I can’t lose you.”
The desperation in his voice sliced me open. I offered him my hand and he didn’t hesitate to take it. His long, thick fingers cupped mine, holding on like I was his last lifeline. I had known that this would happen; deep down, I had known that it would be just like this. And, the stupid idiot I was, I had let myself hope for more.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I promised him with a small, sad smile. “You won’t lose me, Gray. You couldn’t even if you wanted to.”
“I would never want to. Never,” he vowed with a fierceness that made my smile a little less forced.
“Then you won’t.”
THIRTEEN
Gray
Kassa had said that things wouldn’t change between us, but I could feel that they already had. I tried not to let that scare the ever-loving shit out of me, but it was hard to tell myself that it was all going to be okay when our once carefree and open relationship was now tense and she was closing a part of herself off to me.
All day, we did everything she wanted to do. Vegged out on the couch, watching crap chick flicks and comedies that would have normally had her rolling with laughter beside me but barely had her giggling. She sat right beside me, but not cuddled into me, keeping nearly a foot of space between us. When she talked to me, she didn’t completely meet my gaze.
I tried to excuse it by telling myself that she was just feeling raw after what had happened in the kitchen, that she would get over it and we could go back to how everything had been before I had ruined it by letting things happen in her bed that morning. But anxiety sat heavily on my chest.
I wanted a redo of the entire fucking day.
By dinner, she was relaxing a little more, but when she was ready to go to bed, she didn’t ask me to come with her.
“I need a shower,” she muttered. “I’ll see you in the morning before you leave?”