Forgiving Lies

we’ll actually be family?”

“Marry? Candice— Wait . . . how do you even jump from me going on a date with him to marrying him? I’m not going to marry your cousin; sorry. And I don’t care if he’s a professor or not, it doesn’t change the fact that he works for the school. Besides, he’s not even my type.”

“Not your type?” she said, deadpan, and one perfect blond eyebrow shot straight up. “I seem to remember you having the biggest crush on him when we were growing up. And I know he’s family, but I can still say that he’s gorgeous. I’m pretty sure he’s everyone’s type.”

I had to agree with her on that. Blake West was tall, blond, and blue eyed and had a body like a god’s. One of these days he was going to show up on a Calvin Klein billboard. “I had a crush on him when we were thirteen. That was eight years ago.”

“But you had a crush on him for years. Years. You were devastated when he moved away.”

“And like I said, I was thirteen. I was ridiculous.”

Blake was five years older than Candice and me, but even so, all of my childhood memories included him. He was always at Candice’s house to hang out with her older brother, Eli, and we followed them everywhere. I’d viewed both Eli and Blake as awesome older brothers until the day Blake saved my life.

Okay, that’s a little dramatic. He didn’t actually save my life.

I was nine at the time; we’d been playing on a rope swing and jumping into a little lake not far from our houses. When I’d gone to jump, my foot slipped into the foot hole and I ended up swinging back toward land headfirst, screaming the whole way. Blake was standing on the bank and caught me, swinging me into his arms before I could make the trip back toward the water.

In that moment, he became my hero, and I fell in love. Or at least my nine-year-old version of love. My infatuation with him grew over the next few years, but he never saw me as anything other than his “little cousin’s best friend.” I’m sure if I’d been older, that would have been a blow to my ego, but I just kept following him around like I’d always done. When he graduated from high school, he immediately joined the air force and moved away from me. I remember throwing a few “my life is over” fits to Candice, but then I got boobs and hips and the other boys my age started noticing me. And then it was something along the lines of, “Blake who?”

He’d been out of the air force for four years now and had pretty much been off the grid until last fall, when he’d moved to Austin and started working at UT. Candice had flipped out over having her cousin near her again. And I’d just straight flipped out. But then I saw him. He looked like freakin’ Adonis standing there in his godlike, too-beautiful-for-his-own-good glory. Every straight female within a mile radius seemed to flock to him, and he loved every second of it.

That is why I refused to go on a date with him.

“Rachel,” Candice snapped.

I turned my wide gaze to her.

“Did you even hear me?”

“Not unless we’re done talking about Blake.”

“We are if you’ve decided to say yes to him.”

I rolled my eyes. “Why is it so important to you if I go on a date with him or not?”

“Because he’s been asking you out all year! He’s my cousin and you’re my best friend and I love you both and I want to see you two together.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure you and Blake are the only two who feel that way. I have absolutely no desire to date a guy who has women literally hanging on him all the time.” Stupid air force, turning him into sex on a stick.

Suddenly she was sporting her signature pouty face. “Rach? How much do you love me?”

“Nope. No, I’m not going.”

“Are you saying you don’t love me?” I was already shaking my head to say no when she turned on the puppy eyes and continued. “So will you please do this for me? Pleeeeaaasse? I thought you were my best friend.”

I can’t even believe we’re doing this right now! “If I go on one date with him, will you drop this forever?”

She squeaked and did a happy clap. “Thank you, I love you, you’re the best!”

“I didn’t say I would, I said if.”

“But I know you’ll go.”

“He works for the school!” I whined, going back to my original argument. Even though he wasn’t a professor at UT, he did work there as a personal trainer and helped out in the athletics department. Since I was majoring in athletic training and Candice in kinesiology and health ed, we saw him almost daily in classroom-type settings. That just . . . didn’t sit right with me.

“Rachel.” She twisted back around to face me. “Seriously, that is getting old. He already checked it out and it’s a nonissue. Stop acting like you don’t want to date him.”

“I don’t! Who wants to date a man-whore?”

“He isn’t a—well . . . eh.” She made a face. “Well, yeah.”

“Exactly!” Blake was rumored to be screwing most of the females he trained as well as . . . well . . . he was rumored to be screwing pretty much any female he passed. Whether the rumors were true or not was up for debate. But seeing as he didn’t try to squash them and the horde of bimbos was never far from him, I was leaning toward their being true.

“You haven’t dated anyone since Daniel. You need to get back out there.”

“Yes I have. Candi, just because I’m not constantly seen with a guy, like you are, doesn’t mean I don’t date.”

I had gotten kind of serious with Daniel at the beginning of our second year at UT. But apparently six months was too long to make him wait to have sex and he ended up cheating on me. I found out two days after I’d given him my virginity.

Asshole.

After him I’d gone out with a few guys, but they didn’t last much longer than a date or two and an “I’ll call you later.” Not that there was anything wrong with those guys, I was just more interested in being done with school and Texas than getting my “MRS degree” or risking catching a disease.

I sighed to myself and headed toward our door.

“Are you going to find Blake?!” Candice was bouncing in her seat and her face was all lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning.

“What—Candice, no. It’s after midnight! I’m just done talking about this. I’m going to wash my face so I can go to sleep. And I’m not gonna hunt him down either; if he asks me out again, then I’ll say yes.” I grabbed my face wash and was reaching for the knob when someone knocked on the door. I don’t know who I was expecting it to be, but I wouldn’t have thought Blake West would be the one standing there in all his cocky glory. From the look on his face, there was no doubting he’d heard part, if not all, of our conversation. What the eff was he doing in our dorm?

He pulled one long-stemmed red rose—that was unexpected—from behind his back and looked over my shoulder, and his cocky expression went completely serious. “Hey, Candi. Do you mind if I steal Rachel for a few minutes?”

I turned around to look at her and she was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Traitor. I looked back at Blake and he let out a short laugh at my question-mark expression.

“That is, unless you’re busy or don’t want to. It looks like you were headed somewhere.” He looked pointedly at the hand that wasn’t holding on to the door.

It took me a few seconds to look down at my hand and realize he was looking at my face wash. “Oh . . . um, not. No. I mean. Busy. Not busy. I’m not busy.” Wow, that was brilliant.

Blake’s lips twitched and his head fell down and to the side to hide the grin he was failing at keeping back.

Trying not to continue looking like a complete idiot, I took a deep breath in and actually thought about my next question two different times before asking it. Okay, fine, I thought about it four times. “So, what can I do for you?” Yeah, I know. Now you understand why that required a lot of thought.

“I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Uh, you do realize it’s almost one in the morning, right?”