Page 79 of Last Mile

Throwing my hands up wildly, I said, “Then you’re just telling me Marley was gay so I’ll keep dating you.”

Samantha rolled her eyes at me before she snatched her T-shirt off the ground and jerked it over her head. “Wow, you have one hell of an inflated ego if you think I would do that, not to mention that I would have to be pretty fucking psychotic to make something like that up just to keep you.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. That was stupid of me to think, least of all say out loud.”

“Damn straight,” she snapped as she slid into her jeans.

Needing to say the words aloud, I said, “Marley was gay.”

Samantha’s reply of “Yes” came as an angry hiss.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered as I began pacing around the clear- ing. Speaking those three little words was life- altering. If what Samantha said was true, it changed everything between the two of us. It erased everything I had been beating myself up over, except the guilt of Marley’s death.

Holy shit.

Marley and Samantha had never been a real couple. All this time that guilt had been eating me alive, it had been for nothing.

Thinking aloud, I muttered, “But . . . but how is it is possible Marley was gay? He was a man’s man— he rode a motorcycle and worked as a mechanic, for fuck’s sake.”

“Don’t tell me you’re ignorant enough to believe in stereotypes,”

Samantha said. When I looked at her, she had crossed her arms over her chest and her expression had darkened.

“Look, I’m sorry. My mind is overloaded right now as I’m trying to process the fact that not only was my good buddy gay, but he lied to me about it.” I stopped pacing for a second. “And just why in the hell did he lie to me?”

“He knew to fit in with you guys and truly be accepted that he couldn’t be out.”

“That’s crazy. We wouldn’t have given two shits if he was gay,” I argued.

Samantha’s eyebrows rose accusingly. “Oh really? You yourself just spouted a stereotype.”

“I’m in shock, okay? I’m going to say bullshit I don’t mean.”

“Yeah, well, just how many openly gay members do you have in the Raiders?” When I didn’t immediately respond, she huffed out a breath. “Exactly.”

Closing the gap between us, I put my hands on Sam’s shoulders. “You’re right that we don’t have a lot of openly gay guys, and it probably would have been hard on him to make it if he was out. Butgay or straight, he was still someone I cared about— a lot.”

“He would’ve appreciated that.”

“As his friend, you just decided to go along with his lies?”

“I would call it self- preservation more than lying. And yeah, because I loved him, I wanted to do whatever I could to help him out.

If it was pretending to be his girlfriend, then I was happy to do that.”

I ran a hand through my hair. “This is all so crazy, and it changes everything.”

“It does?”

“It sure as hell does. I’ve been beating myself up for months now because I thought I had been wanting a brother’s girlfriend when all along there was nothing romantic between you two.”

Tilting her head at me, Samantha asked, “You wanted me before Marley died?”

I snorted. “Don’t act like you didn’t know I was interested.”

Her signature catlike smile curved her lips. “Okay, so I did. Of course, I didn’t help matters by flirting with you. I guess you could say I wanted you, too.”

“I thought you were just teasing with me— like you were the