Page 21 of Taken by the Rebel

“Is Fay … like, not on board with your plans?”

His sister didn’t know his plans, but she was aware he always had a plan.

“She takes your opinion to heart, Blair. You better be nice.”

“Please, like I can talk badly about you?” She rolled her eyes.

“I’m not joking around with you.” This was important to him.

“Fine. Fine. I can handle this. Trust me. I don’t want a loser to end up with my best friend.”

Just the thought of another guy touching Fay angered him.

“Okay, any other loser would end up dead. You do know you don’t need me or my opinions, right? Fay has been in love with you for like forever.”

“What?”

His sister smiled and slapped his chest. “You heard me.”

“I heard you, but … love? I knew she had a crush on me”

Blair folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not saying another word until you tell me how you feel about my friend.”

Blaze rubbed the back of his head, looking toward his bedroom.

“Damn it, Blaze, if you don’t love her, then I am going to be the one committing murder. Fay is not … she’s … she wants love. Her biggest wish when we were kids was to have a loving family. To have a husband who doted on her and her alone. She always had a big crush on you, but she said she’d never act on it because she knew you’d never feel that way about her.”

“Has she told you how she feels now?” he asked.

“No. I figured she might have grown out of it, but seeing as she’s now living with you, and it’s clear you both are fucking, I guess she never did. Now tell me, how do you feel about her?”

He was about to answer his sister, but Fay opened the bedroom door, dressed so fucking cute in one of the dresses he knew his sister had bought for her.

The dress had little tigers all over, with thick straps over her shoulders. It molded at her chest and flared out from her waist.

He was sure his sister had bought her this dress just to torture him.

“Blair,” Fay said.

His sister glared at him before going to her friend. He watched the two women embrace. They had always been so close, more like sisters than friends.

“How are you?” Blair asked, tucking some of Fay’s hair back from her ears.

He and Blair were tall, and Fay was the smallest of all of them.

“Fine. I’m fine.”

“I’m going to make some breakfast,” Blaze said.

Fay wouldn’t look at him.

His sister was angry at him, not that he could blame her.

“Are you sticking around?” Blaze asked, wanting his sister gone.

“Hell, yeah. In fact, I was thinking of making this a girly day. What do you say? I think I aced my exam. I’ll find out the results tomorrow, but I got through it.”

Fay smiled. “I’m so happy for you.”

“A girls’ day?” Blaze asked.

“You don’t?”

“Hell, no. I actually quite like it.”

“Oh.” Fay didn’t know what to say. “You hated all the other women who were dating your brother.”

Blair tipped her beer back, swallowing. “No, no, no, no. You’ve got that all wrong.” She rolled her eyes. “I hated the skanks that screwed with my brother. He was never the settling-down type. They’d always try to make out that they were special or something like that. Please, my brother was only using them.”

Fay dropped her gaze, staring at the table, not really sure what to say with that new kind of information.