I blinked as I tried processing what she had just repeated. “You’re fucking with me, right?”
“No, Bishop. I’m not.”
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 dress 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 on her panties.
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 clearing. 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 the guilt had been eating me alive, it had been for nothing. Thinking aloud, I muttered, “But . . . but how is it 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. But gay 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.”
“It didn’t help that I was flirting with you.”
“I thought you were just teasing me—like you were the older woman playing at being a cougar, and I was your little cub.”
With a roll of her dark eyes, Samantha said, “You’ve really got to work on how you handle the age difference between us.” She jabbed her finger into my bare chest. “While a woman may be able to handle being a cougar, she is never going to enjoy hearing the words ‘older woman.’”
I winced. “Okay, okay. I’ll work on that.”
“You sure as hell better.”
After brushing a strand of long dark hair out of Samantha’s face, I said, “I promise I’ll make it up to you the next time we’re alone together.”
The frown on her face disappeared and was replaced with a smile. “I’ll make sure that you do.” She brought her lips to mine for a gentle kiss. When she pulled away, she stared intently at me. “Since you know the truth, are you willing to give us a chance?”
Now that I knew I hadn’t been dishonorable to Marley, there was not a single reason why I shouldn’t date Samantha. Pulling her flush against me, I smiled. “Hell yeah.”
“Good.” She jerked her chin at the ATV. “Are you ready to head back? I’m starving and in desperate need of a shower.”
“Yep. Just let me turn the generator off.” Once I completed that chore, I returned to find Samantha already seated on the back of the ATV. “Listen. I need to ask you something else.”
“Okay.”
“Is there anything else you need to tell me? Like you’re really a man or something?”
Samantha snorted. “I would think after last night you wouldn’t have any doubts about that one.”
I waggled my eyebrows at her. “I don’t. I just didn’t want there to be any more secrets between us.”
Her face fell slightly. “There’s not.”
“And the only thing Marley lied about to me was his sexuality, right?”
With a nod, Sam said, “The rest was all true . . . at least as far as I know.”
“I guess we’ll never know all of Marley’s secrets, huh?”