Page 84 of Mountain Dreams
She winced. “Did I really say that?”
“Yes, you really did.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“Good, because I don’t want to see other people or stop this.”
“Neither do I,” she said softly.
“Maddie…”
“Hmm?”
“Those things he said about me were true before you came back into my life.” He fingered the strands of her silky hair and gazed deep into her pretty eyes.
“Came back into your life? I never left it.”
“Yes, you did, the minute you got engaged to my best friend.”
“Oh,” she said on a long exhale.
“Before that, I kept thinking that maybe someday…”
“We’d be together?”
“Um-hmm.”
“Me too.”
He jerked back in shock. “You did?”
She laughed. “Yes!”
“I never knew.”
“I became really good at hiding it.”
“In history class, when you used to scowl at me for forgetting my textbook…”
“And your pencil and homework…yes, even then.”
“You used to give me crap about only dating cheerleaders and bimbos.”
“I was jealous.”
His eyes went wide. “Of them?”
“Only because they had you, not because of who they were.”
“You were way more beautiful than any of them.”
“Ha! You say that now.”
“I would have said it then too, but I didn’t want to scare you away.”
“I was never scared of you.”
“Well, I was scared of you.”
