Going for Four: Counting on Love, Book 4 (26 page)

“I’d do anything to keep you safe,” he said, meaning it to his bones.

“I have to know, though,” she said. “What did you say to them? How did you keep them from calling me?”

He could be honest about this part too. “I told them that you were amazing and that if they were committed to making you happy then great, but if they had even the slightest doubt that they were serious about you and the relationship, then they needed to stay away because they’d have to answer to me and Conner if you were ever anything less than glowing.”

She stared at him.

Yeah, it sounded over-the-top, but he’d meant every damned word. Any man who would ever have made her cry would have found Cody’s fist in his face.

“That wasn’t a little
much
?” she asked.

He shrugged, unapologetic. “Seemed about right to me.”

She sighed. “You said you might have some things to say?”

Well, he hadn’t rehearsed anything, but if she was going to insist…

“Do you have any idea how hard it’s been for me to
not
tell you how I feel? How hard it’s been to only be your friend?” he started. “Do you know how hard it’s been to watch you lick frosting off your fingers and not spread you out on the table? How hard it’s been to give you a peck on the cheek on your birthday instead of pushing you up against the wall and really kissing you? How hard it’s been to dance with you at weddings and not tell you that I love you and that I want to play ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ at
our
wedding?”

She was staring at him with a combination of awe and sadness. “It’s been hard for me too,” she said softly.

“You should have told me.”

“
You
should have told
me.
”

They stood, looking at each other, breathing a little harder.

He really wanted to kiss her.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” she finally said.

He waited.

“Ryan and Shane and Nate…they didn’t let Conner stop them.”

Oh, no, she wasn’t comparing him to the guys her sisters had fallen in love with. Was she?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“I…” She stopped and took another deep breath. “I’m saying that maybe this isn’t what you think it is. I mean, you didn’t feel strongly enough to tell me. You weren’t willing to tell Conner how you feel.”

Un-fucking-believable.

“This is all on me?
I’m
the one who should have told him how I feel? I was trying to respect what
you
wanted.” He worked on keeping his voice even.

“He’s my
brother
. How could I do that to him when I thought all you wanted was sex?”

“How could you think all I wanted was sex?” he demanded. “We’re best friends.”

“Because that’s all you ever want from women.” She pressed her lips together almost as if that had slipped out.

Cody pulled in a long breath through his nose. “That’s all I want from
other
women because I have
you
for everything else. With you…I want it all.”

She looked truly perplexed. “But the moments when we had to pull back and slow down were
physical
,” she said. “You’ve almost kissed me, but you’ve never almost said ‘I love you’.”

She was wrong. He’d almost said it a hundred times.

He didn’t like any of this, but people didn’t yell at Olivia. She simply wasn’t the type of girl you yelled at without being a complete and total asshole. He’d like to think he wasn’t complete and total. At least, not yet.

“I can’t remember a single time that we’ve baked together and I
haven’t
thought about telling you I love you.”

Her eyes welled with tears and he hesitated. Olivia cried more often when she was happy than when she was sad. But he had no idea which this was.

“You say that,” she said with a shake of her head. “I want to believe it. But it isn’t even stronger than your friendship with Conner.”

“That’s what you wanted.”

“How many romantic movies have we watched together, Cody? Seriously. How many romantic movies end with the guy saying ‘Well, I love you but I don’t want to upset your brother’? None. Zero. Because that’s bullshit.”

Olivia didn’t say
bullshit
, and Cody knew her use of it now meant she was riled up. But he also thought it was damned adorable.

“You’ve got a point.”

“Of course, I do. I want someone who’s
crazy
for me,” she went on. “Someone who won’t let anything or anyone stop him from being with me.” She took a deep breath. “You
fought
your feelings. You tried to
not
be in love with me.”

Dammit. He
had
said that about waiting for a guy like Leo in
Titanic.
And he’d meant it. “I wanted to go for it. But I knew it would hurt
you
to hurt Conner, Liv,” Cody said.

But she wanted the big love story, the do-anything, sacrifice-everything hero. She deserved it.

He wasn’t good at that stuff. At least, he didn’t know if he was good at that stuff. That took effort. Conner had been right about that too—Cody liked when things worked out and went smoothly. Who didn’t? Did that make him a bad guy?

He’d spent almost all his time with his favorite person, but he didn’t have to worry about ever really letting her down because they were just friends. That was
easier
. For sure. Except, of course, the wanting her so much his teeth ached at times.

“Oh, come on, Cody. All three of my sisters have done this and Conner’s survived. Shane never would have—”

“Don’t even finish that sentence.”

Fucking Shane Kelley. Leonardo DiCaprio had set some high standards, but he had nothing on Shane. Every woman who hung out at Trudy’s—and then some, since a lot of his antics had been captured on YouTube—now held him up as the ultimate romantic hero. He’d made a huge production of romancing Olivia’s sister Isabelle when she was trying to end things.

He’d set the bar high. That was for sure. The women loved him. The men not so much.

Olivia was chewing on her bottom lip.

“I’m not Shane. I have a history with Conner. And you’re not Isabelle. Conner feels even more protective of you,” he said, proud of how calm and rational he sounded.

She nodded. “I didn’t mean that you had to do what Shane did. I’m saying that I wish you
felt
like doing those things.” She swallowed. “That sounds stupid. I’m sorry. I…I want…” She took another deep breath. “I want a love that is so big and bold, so strong that we don’t care who doesn’t like it. We’ve been together, kind of, for months. We knew each other, we wanted each other—but it wasn’t enough to make either of us brave enough to say the words or risk upsetting Conner. So…”

“So?”

“Maybe it’s not
love
love.”

“Bullshit. I’ll go fight Conner right now if that’s what it takes,” Cody said, pushing off of the counter. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

“Really?”

Cody would happily pound on Conner. He was the one who’d put all these reservations in her mind. And in Cody’s.

The fucker.

“Absolutely.” Cody grabbed his car keys off the counter and started for the door.

“That’s not what I want.”

He turned back at her soft words. “What then?”

“I want to…” She hesitated as if she was nervous about what she was about to say. “I want to make a decision on my own, trust myself to choose the right thing. I want to learn to trust myself.”

“And how are you going to do that?” He wanted those things for her. He wanted her to trust him, of course, but he understood that she needed to believe in her ability to take care of herself. He needed to know she could take care of herself too.

But he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say.

“I want to date. Other guys. Without relying on the computer setup. And without interference from you or Conner.”

He’d been right. He didn’t like it at all. He dropped the keys with a clatter on the table. “No.”

“You said anything.”

He really did want to punch Conner now. “Anything that doesn’t involve you and other men.”

“If we’re meant to be, then it won’t matter who else I meet and spend time with. Don’t you want to know that I’ve been out there, and no matter who else comes along, no matter what they do,
you’re
the one I want to be with?”

“No. I’m cool with believing that I’m the one you want to be with, period. I don’t feel like I need to win a contest.” He didn’t want her to have any other options. It would take her ten seconds to find a guy who was willing to jump in, sweep her off her feet and openly love her—exactly like she wanted. He’d always known it.

But it wouldn’t be
him.
It needed to be him.

“Well, first, this is your fault. If you hadn’t been interfering all along, I’d already know for sure.”

“I’m kind of pissed that you don’t know
now
that I’m the one you want to be with,” he said with a frown.

“No,” she said, raising her index finger in front of him. “You don’t get to be pissed or offended or whatever. You’ve had lots of other women, and you’ve only been
my
buddy, the man who’d been
resisting
me for almost two years. I don’t know if I want to be with someone who was so tormented by me licking frosting off my fingers and dancing with me at weddings but never
did anything about it
.”

“Olivia, I…” Was he going to admit that yeah, okay, so he’d been pretty damned content with everything overall? That didn’t seem like a good move. Because he hadn’t been. Not really. He’d
really
wanted to lick frosting off of her and tell her he loved her at all five of the weddings they’d gone to together.

But no, he hadn’t done anything about it.

“It’s like you’ve been in this big buffet over the past two years, sampling a little bit of everything except for the tiramisu at the end,” she said.

Ooookay. She knew he loved tiramisu.

“You’ve been eyeing it. You’ve been making sure no one
else
takes the tiramisu. But
you
haven’t picked it up yet. Then suddenly someone announces that they’re taking the tiramisu off the buffet for good. Now that you’ve tried everything else and haven’t found anything better, and you might actually lose your chance to try it, you’ve finally chosen it. And it’s damned good. Everything you ever imagined it would be. Better even. So you’re happy. You’re good. All is well.”

He felt a smile tugging on the corner of his mouth. He was following her. She was his tiramisu. And she was right—it was everything he’d imagined and more. He supposed the dating site and her declaration that they needed to find a boyfriend and girlfriend was the threat of the discontinued tiramisu in this analogy.

“As for me,” she went on. “I’ve been on a deserted island with only chocolate chip cookies to eat.”

“You love chocolate chip cookies.”

She nodded. “I do. But I’ve never even tried a chocolate soufflé. And there are probably at least a dozen desserts I’ve never even heard of that I haven’t tried. And I’m on this damned island so there’s not even a
chance
that I can try something else. I have these chocolate chip cookies and I love them. But of course I do—they’re all I have.”

He thought about that. “Hey. I’m the chocolate chip cookies?”

She nodded.

“And the deserted island is…”

“My love life.”

Right. “I’m all that’s been around, and even though you love me, you think it might be because I’m the only option?”

“I love you because you’re you. Chocolate chip cookies are awesome even when there are a million other choices available,” she said. “But chocolate chip cookies can be awesome and not be…”

“The best,” he filled in bluntly.

She shrugged. “It’s not a perfect comparison. But yes, maybe I want to be with you because you’ve been the only option. You know, thanks to you scaring everyone off in the past year a half.”

Fuck. He was getting damned tired of everyone having points but him. And that all the points seemed to be going against him.

“If you’re going to try things that are new and better than chocolate chip cookies, I’m going to have to buy a lot more beer,” he finally said.

She crossed her arms. “Does that mean you’re going to let me off No Man Island?”

“Don’t think I’m not tempted to keep you here and show you that chocolate chip cookies are delicious.”

Her voice went soft when she said, “They are. It has been.”

He studied the face that he’d come to know even better than his own. “Then why do you want more?

“I love the fact that you’ve been with so many women and still want me most,” she said. “I love being your
choice
.”

“And I’m not your choice?”

“Not yet. You can’t be if I’ve never had other options.”

He sighed. “That’s crazy, you know.”

“Making sure that we’re making the right decision is crazy?”