More Than Friends (2 page)

“I dream about you at night. And at work, when I’m not sleeping. Dirty dreams. Filthy, really. Dreams a girl shouldn’t dream about her friend, but there you have it. And when I see you, I wish, just wish, the dreams were real. I wish you’d kiss me the way you do in my imagination. Wish you’d tear my clothes off and do filthy things to me. I wish,
wish
that you felt for me what I feel for you, and we weren’t sitting here at this very moment, drinking red wine and Earl Grey tea.”

Lucy paused to draw breath, her heart beating frantically, her cheeks burning.

Seb just gaped at her.

“I lay in the bath earlier, thinking about you. Fantasizing about you. I touched myself, wishing it was your hand. Couldn’t stop touching, until…until…” Lucy closed her eyes, mortified that she was voicing all of this, yet unable to stop. After months of keeping it to herself, the confession felt liberating. “I came thinking about you. And it wasn’t the first time. But the thing is, I don’t want to just fantasize anymore. Don’t want to just dream about you. I don’t just want to be your friend. Can’t be your friend, ’cause what I feel for you goes way beyond friendship. I’m like, wildly, crazily in love with you.”

“Lucy…” Seb’s voice sounded hoarse, scratchy. He looked dazed. “Geez, I don’t know what to say.” He drew a shaky hand over his shaved head.

Her breath caught in her diaphragm and she hiccupped. “Say you feel the same way. Or at the very least, tell me there’s a chance you could feel this way.”

“I love you too. You know I do.” Again he drew his hand over his head. “You’re my gal, my friend, my mate. ’Course I love you. Just…”

Lucy’s heart stopped beating. Or maybe her lungs stopped working. She couldn’t tell. “Just…?”

His blue gaze held hers. “Just…not like that.”

That was when she recognized it. The pity in those dazzling eyes. He no longer looked dazed. Now he just looked sympathetic.

“Not like that,” she repeated dumbly, letting his pity settle in her stomach, hating it.

“Now I know for sure you didn’t listen when I told you about my date the other night. Because if you had, you’d have heard me say it wasn’t just one date. It turned into two more, two nights in a row, because I realized how much I like Sarah. How I think there’s something between us.”

The sound she made was more a whimper than an acknowledgement of his words.

For a very long time she sat there in the café, oblivious to the people around them, just staring at Seb. And he stared back at her. Never once averting his gaze. He seemed incapable of looking away, seemed only to be able to look at her. He also seemed incapable of speaking. Once or twice he opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Not a word. Not a sound. Yet still he stared at her, just like she stared at him.

No, not just like she stared at him. Because as she stared, a sense of horror filtered through her veins, seeping into her nerves and finally usurping her conscious thought.

She’d just confessed her every feeling to him, and in response he’d confessed to…nothing. He felt nothing for her. Nothing more than a strong sense of friendship.

He was interested in someone else. Another woman.

Humiliation, akin to nothing she’d ever experienced, washed over her. She’d just blurted out her innermost feelings for her friend, and he did not return them. Not one of them.

Nausea almost knocked her sideways, Her stomach lurched, and the few chips she’d eaten burned like bile in her throat. She was going to throw up. Going to lose her food like she’d lost her dignity.

Only she wouldn’t do it here. Not in front of Seb.

She’d already embarrassed herself enough in front of him. Already destroyed whatever they had between them in one rash, selfish confession.

She’d told him she loved him for only one reason: because she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. Didn’t want to. Something this huge couldn’t be kept to herself. Not when it included Seb. He had a right to know, didn’t he? He should know, shouldn’t he?

But as she stared into his eyes, she knew the answer. Knew it all the way through to her bones.

No, he shouldn’t know. No, she shouldn’t have shared it with him. Because he did not feel the same way. He never had. And now that her confession was out there, it would always be out there. Always sit between them like a hideous secret she should never have revealed.

Lucy bolted. Jumped up so fast her chair toppled over. She charged out of the café, taking a sharp left and racing toward the train station.

Pausing only to toss the contents of her heaving stomach into a garbage bin and then wipe her mouth, she flew into the station, yanked her monthly pass from her purse, and caught the first train that chugged into sight.

Chapter Two

Sebastian could not have been more gobsmacked had Lucy proven she was an alien from another galaxy. Nothing in his realm of experience had prepared him for her confession.

The probability of Loo falling for him? Like a million to one. A billion to one. Hell, less than that. Not one month ago she’d been in a serious relationship with another man. Seb had thought it the real deal, but Lucy had broken up with the guy, much to the surprise of everyone they knew.

Had she ended the relationship because of him?
Impossible
. He and Lucy were mates. Friends. That’s all. That’s all they’d ever been. All he’d ever considered her to be.

No,
that’s
all
was a piss-poor understatement. She was a brilliant friend. His go-to girl. His confidante. The one he poured his heart out to. Discussed the issues that meant something to him. His BFF—as his eight-year-old niece liked to call her.

In love with him? Turned on by him?

No way. Not Lucy.

Seb had never thought about her in a sexual manner. A staggering accomplishment, since every woman he met he sized up sexually in the first thirty seconds of meeting her. But Lucy had always just been Lucy, just like his mate Justin had always just been Justin.

In fact, Lucy had been his friend Leo’s girlfriend when they’d first met. Probably the reason his and Lucy’s relationship had begun on a nonsexual level. A guy just didn’t hit on his mate’s girl—current or ex. Leo and Lucy hadn’t lasted much longer than a few months, but he and Lucy had. Six years longer. And each day they became closer.

Seb scratched his head, perplexed and stunned.

Why, if his relationship with Lucy was as platonic as his friendship with Justin, and if Seb was really into Sarah, was he sporting a fucking huge erection?

And why had he been sporting that erection ever since his cute librarian friend had looked at him with her big brown eyes and flushed cheeks and told him she’d been having filthy dreams about him?
Masturbating in the bath.

And what the fuck was he doing, sitting in the restaurant when Loo had taken off? What kind of a jerk was he, letting her get away?

Jesus, they needed to talk, needed to straighten things out between them.

But until the blood drained from his cock, Seb couldn’t do a damn thing.

Ninety minutes later, after jogging the length of Newtown twice searching for her, he rang her doorbell.

She didn’t answer.

So he rang again and then a third time, sensing she wouldn’t come to the door anytime soon.

He spent a good five minutes ringing—to no avail. He considered using his key. Considered just opening up and heading on in, but decided against it. Lucy had fled, raced out of the restaurant in her desperation to get away from him.

He couldn’t, wouldn’t betray her trust by barging in on her uninvited now. He wouldn’t leave, but he wouldn’t let himself in. He’d be so persistent, she’d finally give up ignoring him and open her damn door just to get him to stop bugging her.

So he switched to knocking. He rapped on the wood until his knuckles grew raw. Then he banged on it with the palms of his hands.

Nothing.

Lucy’s unit remained dark and silent.

“Damn it, Lucy. Open up.”

He listened intently for any movement from within and heard none.

“We can’t leave things like this. Talk to me. Please.” He stared at the bag in his hand. “I have chocolate. Lots of it. Mint Aero and Chunky Kit-Kat. And yes, it’s a shameless bribe to get inside.”

He tried charming and coercing her for ages. No luck.

“Shit, Loo. I’m not leaving ’til you open the goddamned door. I’ll sit here all night if I have to.” He would too. Regardless of the deadline he’d intended to tackle after tonight’s movie, he wouldn’t leave without speaking to her.

When silence continued to echo from within, he grimaced. “Fine. I’m right outside when you’re ready.” Frustration got the better of him, and he slammed the bag against the door. Work on Peter’s Peanut Butter Bars would just have to wait. “Eating the fucking chocolate.”

He turned around, all set to slide down the door and sit on his ass until she finally opened up, but never got the opportunity.

Lucy stood in front of him, two shopping bags in each hand. Her brown eyes looked enormous in her pale face. Had there not been two bright spots of pink in the middle of her cheeks, he’d have worried she was sick.

“I’m not home,” she explained quietly.

“Shopping?” He glared at the bags, flexing his tender fingers he’d knocked almost down to the bone. “Really?”

She shrugged. “I needed some things.”

“At midnight?”

“My kitchen’s empty. What are you doing here, Sebastian?”

“What do you think I’m doing here? We need to talk.”

She shook her head. “No, we don’t. I want to sleep. I have to be at the library at eight tomorrow. So if you’ll just step out of my way, I’ll let myself in and go to bed.”

He ignored her, reaching out to take her shopping bags, not giving her a choice when she tried to clasp them tight. “You won’t be able to take your keys out if you’re holding all the groceries.”

She released the bags reluctantly, stepped around him and placed her key in the lock. “I need you not to be here now,” she whispered.

“We have to sort this out. You can’t throw something like that at me, and then split before I’ve had time to comprehend it all.”

“What I
can’t
do is look at you. I can’t face the humiliation.”

She pushed the door open and walked a few steps inside. He followed, not giving her a chance to object, going straight through to the kitchen to place all the parcels on the counter.

She stayed where she was, holding the door open, a clear indication she waited for him to leave.

Seb propped his hip against the frame of the kitchen doorway and looked at her expectantly. “Humiliation?”

She gave a big, dejected sigh before pushing the door shut. “Don’t act dumb, please. What just happened with us? That was the most excruciating experience of my life. And you standing there now, looking all
what-the-fuck-is-she-talking-about
, isn’t making this any easier.”

“Damn it, Loo, you changed the game tonight. You blew me the hell away. What am I supposed to do? Pretend you didn’t say anything? Pretend everything’s exactly the same as it was when we walked into the movie? I can’t do that, babe. You just switched all the rules, and I’m floundering here.”

Her shoulders dropped, as though all the air had seeped out of her, leaving her deflated. “I should have kept my big mouth shut. Should never have said anything.”

Seb scratched the back of his head, flummoxed. Should she have kept quiet? Would it have been better that way? “Why did you say something?”

“Because…” Her eyes shut, giving him the impression she couldn’t bear to face him while she spoke. “Because I couldn’t keep it in any longer. I had to tell you. Had to let you know how I felt. You know everything about me. It seemed insane you didn’t know my biggest secret. Especially when it was all about you.”

“Loo—”

She held up her hand, cutting him off, and shook her head. Her long brown curls tumbled over her shoulders. “That’s not the full truth.” The pink tinge in her cheeks turned scarlet, but she opened her eyes to look at him. “I told you because I wanted to hear that you felt the same way. I…I guess I hoped if I confessed how I really feel, you’d be hit with this epiphany, and you’d realize you were in love with me too, and we could love each other, and, you know…” She twirled her hands in the air. “Live happily ever after.”

Seb’s heart sank. There hadn’t been an epiphany. Hadn’t been any thunderbolts of realization. There’d just been stunned surprise.

And then the unexpected erection.

“But you’re not in love with me. You want her. Sarah.” She squeezed her eyes shut again and raised her head to the ceiling. “I, uh, I never took the time to think about what would happen if you didn’t feel the same way.” She halfheartedly reached out to him, but her arm flopped down, as though she didn’t have the strength or energy to hold it up. “And obviously, you, uh, don’t feel the same way.”

“I’m sorry.” His heart constricted, and regret, like physical pain, shot through his chest. “So sorry. I do love you, babe. Heaps.” He shrugged helplessly. “Just not like that.”

“Yeah.” She nodded as she looked at him, her eyes haunted. “I kinda got that at the café. Which is why I need you to leave now. Give me time to lick my wounds in private, okay?”