Page 88 of The C Agreement
He stopped walking, but he didn’t look at me, so I rounded his front and fisted his shirt.
“I don’t understand. You’ve wanted this forever. Why would you give up like that?”
“For you.”
I stepped back. “Me?” I shook my head. “But I want this for you.”
“At the expense of you losing your relationship with your brother?”
My hand went to my throat.
“He’s been telling you to stay away from me for forever. What do you think he would have done if I had told him I’d been fucking his little sister behind his back?”
“Been mad at you,” I said in a low voice.
Cade snorted. “No shit. But he would have been mad at you too.”
Hesitantly, I moved closer to him again. “But he would have been way angrier with you.”
“Yeah, well, this was not my secret to tell.” His big hand smacked his chest. “It’soursecret. And it would have been really shitty of me to tell him about our relationship without talking to you first.”
And that was the moment I went from falling for Cade to being head over heels in love with him.
He pushed my hair behind my ear as his eyes grew soft. “Besides, it’s not really any of his business who either of us sleeps with. You and I are both adults, and if we want to be together, we don’t need his permission.”
My eyes darted across his face, trying to read every inch. “I don’t understand.”
“I want to be with you, Rayne. Not because of some bet. Not for a month. I want to be with you for real.”
“But what about Em?”
Cade’s nose curled up. “What the fuck does Em have to do with us?”
I forced myself to look away. “I know you love her.”
“What are—”
I put a finger to his lips. “Give me a minute. I saw the way you looked at her after the accident. You were so worried and scared. I’ve never seen you look at anyone like that. And you took Em’s virginity. As much as I rant about it being a social construct and how purity culture ruins everything, it still had to mean something. And then, when she broke up with you, I think it hurt you more than you want to admit. So, you use your mom being single when you were growing up as an excuse for why you are the way you are, but it’s really because you can’t have the woman you love.”
Taking my hand from his mouth, he said, “Are you sure you’re not a storyteller instead of a lawyer? Because that’s quite the tale you’ve spun in your head.” He cupped my face. “I have never loved Em. What you saw at the hospital was because I heard my good friend had been in an accident. I didn’t know if she was going to live or die at that point because no one had told me her injuries were minor and she was going home within the hour. As for in high school, I’d thought she was hot, and I wanted to get in her pants, but I was sixteen. I wanted to get into pretty much every female’s pants. It was a one-time thing, and it hadn’t even been that good.” He smirked. “You probably don’t want to hear this, but I slept with someone else the very next night.”
“So romantic,” I said dryly.
Pulling me into his arms, he said, “Hey, this grand romance was all in your head.”
“True.”
“So, now that we’ve established I am not and never have been in love with Em, can I tell you who I’m actually in love with?”
“Who?” I whispered.
A slow smile spread across his face. “You, baby.”
I blinked a couple of times because the look in his eyes was ten times stronger than what it had been at the hospital.
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never been in love before. I didn’t recognize the signs. It wasn’t until your brother confronted me that I realized I couldn’t throw you under the bus, not even to get my dream restaurant.”