Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) by Karen Rose

            Her smile dropped away, her expression instantly wary. “But?”

            “It wasn’t like yours. Not then. Then, when I was twenty and you were seventeen, I knew I liked you. I knew I felt something for you.” He huffed an awkward laugh. “I wanted you?”

            A new smile bloomed. Sheer delight. “You did? Back then?”

            “I did. But you were seventeen and you were grieving and I would never have taken advantage of you that way.”

            She traced his lower lip with her fingertip. “I know. But I have to say that knowing you wanted to is an ego boost.”

            He winced. “I never meant to make you feel . . . less.”

            “I know that, too.” She drew a deep breath and braced her shoulders. “And then?”

            “Then you joined the army and I was pissed off.”

            “I remember that.”

            “You were eighteen and I’d planned something . . .” He felt himself blushing again, his embarrassment made worse by the way she was watching him with wide eyes.

            “Something?” she prompted. “Something . . . sexual?”

            “God,” he groaned. “Yes. I figured you were eighteen and I was still twenty and that I wasn’t going to be a pervert if I made a move. But then you said you were going away. That you’d already signed up. You didn’t tell me you were planning to do that.”

            That final sentence came out more accusingly than he’d wanted it to. She winced now. “I’m sorry. If I’d known . . .”

            “Yeah, well,” he grumbled. “I figured that you wouldn’t have done that if you’d felt anything, so I stowed it. Told myself we were friends. That you were like my sister.”

            She looked horrified. “Shit.”

            He laughed. “I never managed to convince myself of the sister part.”

            “That’s good, at least. But the friend part stuck, huh?”

            “It did. When you’d come home on leave, it was hard. I was hard,” he said ruefully. “I’d have to leave the room and go off by myself and say, ‘Just a friend,’ over and over until I was ready to come back out and be . . . well, presentable.”

            She grinned again, her gaze dropping to his groin, where he was still hard as a rock and raring to go. “Oh? And did those moments alone involve anything else? Like . . . y’know, relief? And are you almost done talking?”

            “Behave, brat.” He shook his head, but fondly. “When I was closer to twenty, yes, those little getaways sometimes involved me getting relief. As I got older, I got better at keeping you compartmentalized in the ‘friend’ box in my brain.”

            She was serious again. “You’re good at compartmentalizing your emotions,” she murmured. “That’s how you survived an abusive father. I get that.”

            For a moment he could only stare. Then he chided himself for being so surprised. She’d always known him better than anyone else. “I think you’re right.”

            “The distance didn’t help. You graduated and got drafted to Boston and I was deployed.”

            “I worried about you all the time,” he confessed. “Those Skype calls were some of the only times I thought I could breathe.”

            “And the other times?”

            “When I was on the basketball court. In front of a crowd. Then everything else went away. But then, when you’d come home, I’d keep saying, friend, friend, friend. I knew it wasn’t true deep down, but over time it became a kind of truth. You know?”

            “I know.” She hesitated. “And then you met Tory.”

            He nodded. “She was bright and happy and, well, there. With me.”

            “She made you happy,” Liza said, without an iota of envy or anger.

            “She really did.”