Page 26 of Blitz

“Tucker…”

“You don’t want me. You just want the idea of me.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Then why did you call me up on Saturday night, blitzed out of your mind?” He takes an aggressive bite of his sandwich, his eyes hard.

I crack my knuckles. “Why did you kiss me?” He doesn’t answer. “You say I ruined your life, and then you kiss me, so clearly your feelings aren’t so clean cut in this matter. Why. Did you. Kiss me?”

Chapter eleven

Tucker

“Because I’m still in love with you.”

The words burst out of me before I can stop them. My breathing becomes sharp and ragged.

She blinks at me, taken aback. I can see the gears turning in the back of her mind.

“Because I’m still in love with you,” I say, more calmly now. My fingers tighten on my sandwich, creating a oozing crater of peanut butter. “Because I always have been, even when I hated you.”

Her throat works. “But you don’t? Hate me?”

I sigh. I know when to admit defeat.

“No, I don’t.”

Mason rubs at her eye. “So, let me get this straight. You want nothing to do with me. You won’t be friends with me. But you’re in love with me?”

I take another bite of my sandwich. It’s supposed to make me feel better. All it does is get lodged in my throat.

“This doesn’t need to be complicated. We can make this work,” she says.

Oh, the naïveté…

“There’s nothing to make work. We’ll just exist,” I tell her, because that’s all I can offer her.

She huffs out a breath of nervous laughter. “I don’t want to exist in a world where we’re not us.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that a part of me is still in love with you, too.”

I drop my sandwich.

Mason bites her lip, her eyes roving over my face. “Tucker…”

“You’re still in love with me?” My voice breaks. I can’t believe it.

I’m angry. I’m furious. But I can’t deny that this is what I’ve wanted to hear her say every single day for the last two and a half years. All I’ve ever wanted is her. She has been my whole world from the day we met when we were seven years old. I’ve missed her every single day we were apart.

“I am.” She swallows. “And you’re still in love with me.”

Slowly, I nod. Something like hope blooms deep inside me.

“Baby, this isn’t rocket science,” she says. “We should—we deserve it to ourselves to try again.”

My mouth is thick with the taste of the peanut butter. I clear my throat. It doesn’t help.