He ducked his head, hiding those light brown eyes. He’d clearly cleaned up for a date, and Tam would’ve known it had he just come outside after she’d texted or not. She loved his black cowboy hat and the red, white, and blue checkered shirt.
“What was I supposed to tell them?”
“Answer the question.”
“Between me and you?” He lifted his eyes to hers. “Or for them?”
“Between me and you,” she said, her throat closing. She didn’t want to know the truth. She wanted their relationship to be real.
“I said I didn’t need rules,” he said.
“Yet you made one a few seconds before I got here, and then got all bent out of shape when I broke it.”
A few moments of silence passed, and then Blaine nodded. “I suppose that’s true.” He closed her door and went to get in the driver’s seat.
Tension rode with them down the lane to the highway, and Blaine turned toward Lexington, which also led to downtown Dreamsville.
“Tell me what you want, Blaine,” she said.
“I…” His voice trailed off, and Tam wished he could just spit it out, as he so often told her to do.
“If there are no rules, you don’t get to be mad at me,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
Tam didn’t know what to say next. There were so many confusing things happening between them. He was sending so many mixed messages.
Just tell him.
Tam seized onto the thought and looked out her window. “I’m just going to be honest,” she said. “I don’t want any rules for this relationship either, because I want it to be real. I want this to be, uh, a real date, and I—” She ground her voice through her throat, determined to fully commit to what she’d started. “I really liked kissing you last night. I can’t forget about it, and I can’t take back that I said I had a crush on you. If you can forget that, you’re so much better than me. I just can’t forget that you kissed me and that you’d said you’d been thinking about it for a while. I just can’t.”
She turned toward him, adding, “Not only that, but you then texted to say you didn’t need rules, especially not number three, when number three was no kissing. What am I supposed to do with that?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Just be honest with me,” she said. “We’ve always been honest with each other.”
“Okay, that’s not true,” he said. “You’ve never once told me you had a crush on me.”
Tam’s frustration increased, bubbling and boiling. “Yeah, well, I do. I do right now, and I did five years ago when I turned thirty and you gave me car mats for my blasted birthday, and I did when I came back from my leatherworking certification, and I did when you graduated from high school.” Her chest heaved, but she felt so much lighter now than she had a few minutes ago.
Blaine looked at her for so long, he jerked the truck when he finally focused on the road again. “I thought you wanted the car mats,” he said.
Tam rolled her eyes. “Blaine, you’re so blind. Utterly blind.” She folded her arms so she wouldn’t cry. She would not cry. She would not.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“We had an agreement. When I turned thirty, if neither of us was in a relationship, you’d ask me out. I got car mats. The message was pretty dang clear, Blaine.” She really wanted to get out of this truck, especially when he said nothing. Why didn’t he say something? Why had he shown up at her house, claiming she’d forgotten him at the house?
“Take me home, please,” she said, her voice pitching up.
“No, Tam, come on,” he said.
Tam kept her eyes out her window and clenched everything tight to hold the tears back.
“I forgot about the agreement,” Blaine said quietly. “If I’m being honest, I’d like this date to be real, and I’m really hoping I didn’t mess things up too badly, because I’d really like to kiss you again later tonight.”
“Things won’t be the same between us,” she said.
“I know that,” he said. “That’s the hardest part about this. That’s why I keep going back and forth.”
“Maybe it’ll be better,” Tam said, still unable to look at him.
He reached over and slid his fingers along her forearm until she unfolded her arms and slipped her fingers between his. He squeezed her hand, and with sparks shooting through her body from his touch, she was able to look at him.
He smiled, finally softening into the sexy cowboy she’d been crushing on. They laughed together, and Tam sent up a prayer that a romantic relationship with Blaine would be better than being his best friend.