Free Fairytale Love - Becca & Brian by Melanie Shawn Page A

hanging on his arm for hours.
    Tonight, she pulled away from him as soon as his arms had wrapped around her and he’d felt her shiver like his touch had given her the creeps.
    Which meant that she must know how he felt, even if just subconsciously. That blue-eyed girl knew him better than anyone. Why Brian had thought that he’d be able to keep her in the dark about something as important as the fact that he’d fallen in love with her, was ridiculous. They were too connected—too in tune—to think that she wouldn’t notice his odd behavior.
    Brian scooped a chip into the bowl of salsa and popped it in his mouth. As he crunched down on his salty snack, he realized that he needed to talk to Becca about all of this. If he didn’t, he would damage their relationship. There was no doubt in his mind.
    Before today, part of him—all of him—had been holding out hope that his newly discovered feelings for her would just fizzle out. But after today, he knew that wasn’t going to happen.
    Brian’s stomach flipped with nervous energy as he thought about how Becca would take the news, but deep down, he knew that they would be okay. They were Becca and Brian. Even unwanted, unrequited, unwelcome love couldn’t erase a lifetime of them being them .
    Yep. He simply needed to lay his cards out on the table so they could deal with this. Maybe, once he said it out loud, it would take some of the power away from it. Maybe facing the issue head on, would snap Brian out of this love-spell he’d fallen under. Maybe they’d even laugh about it…someday.
    With the decision made, he felt lighter than he had since he’d walked onto the dance floor a year ago. A weight lifted from his chest—one that he hadn’t even realized he’d had since the moment he’d pulled his best friend into his arms at her sister’s birthday party. Since the moment his body hadn’t responded to Becca as his sidekick, his buddy, his pal—instead, it had responded to her as a woman. Need had shot through him with so much force that his knees had actually buckled beneath him. Luckily, Becca had thought he was just playing around on the dance floor.
    Nope. That had not been the case at all. He’d almost fallen flat on his ass from the power of his desire for her.
    Honest to God, Brian’s first thought had been that he must have been horny. Because come on. It was Becca . But he’d quickly discarded that theory because he’d been with Skylar at the time, having sex on a regular basis. He remembered his mind being flooded in confusion as he’d tried to process the fact that he’d been so hard that he was sure that he was going to have a permanent imprint of his zipper on his shaft as Becca’s soft curves had molded against him while they’d swayed to the music together.
    He’d thought it would pass. That it was just a phase his body was going through. Possibly just hormones. It wasn’t. She needed to know what was going on before he damaged things between them.
    Brian stood, rolled the bag of chips up, popped the lid back on the salsa, and moved to the kitchen to put them away. As he walked up the stairs, he yawned, and when his chest expanded without the weight of keeping a fairly important secret from the most important person in his world, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that telling Becca was the right thing to do.
    Now, he just needed to get a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow, he’d call and see if she wanted to go to breakfast at The Diner, which was a staple in their small hometown of Harper’s Crossing. Also, it was kind of ‘their’ place. They’d gone there more times than Brian could count. They even had ‘their’ booth. It was the round booth in the far left corner.
    As he reached the top of the stairs, a slideshow of Becca sitting across from him in that booth over the years played through Brian’s mind. Starting with them in grade school, her hair in two braids as she smiled a toothless smile and they drank malts after