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Winter Ball. Part 5.

 For @lifeofkamryn because her comment make me smile. Sarah, xx

The news drops down on me like a bomb and I’m too stunned to speak. I stare up at him and his challenging face. There was no way he could have known. I never gave a thing away, not even in the texts I had sent him. For weeks I played dumb and took my sweet time in teasing him with false leads, even going to far as to make him think that I thought Matt was Matthew Carrigan.

Now he tells me this… I just… What?

“What?” I speak my thoughts aloud, even if the words come out shakily. “How could you possibly have known that?”

Now it was Matt’s turn to tease me. “Let’s just say your Trojan Horse was a little loose lipped at one of Kyle’s parties,” he smiles, those dazzling blue eyes coming to life once more. God, he was… perfection personified. “She got drunk and threatened that if I ever hurt you, she would happily decapitate me. Or at least that what I think she was trying to say. It was hard to tell with all the slurring.

“Anyway,” he continues as he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me into him. “I asked her why she thought I would ever hurt you, and she said it was because ‘she knows.’”

I process what he says and make a mental note to never tell Maggie a thing again. Seriously, Mags? I finally had the upper hand and she went and… I groan. “I’m going to kill her.” I process the information for a little while longer, considering its implications, but there was still one thing that annoyed me. “Where does Miss Amazonian Legs come into this?” I ask, my eyes narrowing on him. “Why did you let Dani Rocha flirt with you?”

“For so many reasons,” Matt sings songs his answer. “Firstly because she’s Kyle’s girlfriend. I set them up over the summer and she owed me a favor. This was it. Secondly, it was because I wondered if you would get jealous. If you got jealous then you would have stormed over and made it very clear that you were angry with me. So, why didn’t you get jealous?”

I bite the inside of my cheek and squirm away when Matt pokes me there, sending shivers down my spine. “Because I trusted you,” I shrug, trying to be casual about it. When Matt’s arm pulled me closer into his chest, the scent that I was far too familiar with intoxicating me, my thoughts ran away from me, and the truth forced its way out of me. “Because I know that you love me. Me. No one else.”

“I do love, you,” Matt confirms as he drops his head closer to mine, his breath tickling against my cheek. “Do you love me, Penguin?”

“More than you will ever know, Honey Bun,” I say, earning a laugh from Matt.

“That nickname really is growing on me,” he teases playfully.

“Yeah?” I giggle, as I feel his lips trace their way towards my ear. “I like it, too.”

“Dance with me?” Matt whispers into my ear. He pulls back slightly to read my answer in my face, and smiles when he sees that I’m grinning up at him. “Good. Because I have a surprise planned for you. It’s what kept me busy all this week. I hope you’ll like it.”