Because I’m not sure if he wants the real me, and if he said no…I’m not sure I could handle that either.
I pull open the door, but no one’s there. When I glance down, there’s no delivery—just a tiny pink figurine. My Princess Peach, striking her power pose. I bend down and pick her up.
“My sleep score has been shit,” a warm voice says from across the lobby.
“Owen?” my voice croaks out. He’s leaning against the doorframe of the apartment across the hall. Deep purple beneath his eyes, his hair a mess, and his usually crisp button-down is rumpled and slightly untucked. He looks like I feel.
“My bot told me to improve my sleeping conditions,” he says, taking one tentative step towards me. “I think it’s saying I’d sleep better with you in my bed.”
“I’ll have to talk to the designer. It sounds like a bug.”
“I think it’s pretty accurate,” he says, and the faint blush I love crawls across his cheek. “Plus, thirty thousand people who’ve downloaded the app this week agree with me.”
“How do you know how well the launch did?”
“I told you,” he says, stepping closer but still out of reach. “I like to be prepared…especially when I’m about to sell myself to a prospect.”
“Okay,” I smile, despite my hammering heart and my clammy palms. “Let’s hear it.”
“I rush into things. I’ve tried to fix everything for everyone my whole life. I like to save the day—even when no one asks me to.” He looks down for a moment, jaw tight, then lifts his eyes to mine. “But you? You don’t need fixing. You’re already everything. That’s how I know this is different. All I want is to be the one who gets to stand beside you, exactly as you are.”
“I accidentally eavesdropped on your call with your sister,” I confess.
He nods, but he doesn’t look angry, just…relieved. “I wondered.”
“You said maybe this was fake.” I point my finger back and forth between us.
“We might have started out faking it, but Liv—” he takes another step closer, his voice steady now, eyes fixed on mine, “—every single thing I’ve said or done while I’ve been with you has been one hundred percent real.
“At the bar, I didn’t step in because I thought you needed saving. I pretended to be your husband because I was already drawn to you and knew you were completely out of my league.” His hand lifts, but stops short. “I didn’t say yes to the fake engagement because you were desperate. I did it because I would have done anything to spend more time with you.
“And every moment we spent together, it got harder to not want more of that. More of you. That was never fake.”
“Owen,” my voice shakes a little, and my eyes get glassy with tears. “I’ve spent so long hiding from anything real—because it always felt so hard. But you…you make it feel easy. Like I don’t have to fight so damn hard to be enough. Like you see all of me, and still stay. With you, I feel like I can finally breathe.”
He steps closer, but he’s still just outof reach.
“I can picture a future with you—not because I want to rush, but because it’s so easy it almost hurts. Everything just…makes more sense with you in it.”
He lets out a shaky breath, then smiles faintly.
“I want to see you in yellow—hell, I’d paint a whole house yellow for you. I want to eat fried food and let you annihilate me at video games. I want to drive with the top down and curl up to binge shows we only watch together. I want you to teach me about cognitive load reduction, and I want to memorize every little sound you make when I touch you. I’ll stand up to your mother, and I’ll learn to surf with your brother. I want to know every goddamned thing about you—the messy, the imperfect, the real.”
His eyes hold mine, and I can’t look away.
“You don’t have to fit anyone else’s idea of perfect. I’ll spend as long as you’ll let me proving that to you.” His voice catches, raw and unguarded. “Because to me… the real you is perfect.”
A strangled sob escapes me at the end of his speech, and I reach out. He takes my hand without hesitation, twines our fingers, and kisses the spot my fake Chinatown ring used to sit.
“I don’t want to be your fake husband or your fake fiancé or your fake boyfriend or even a very real hook up,” he says. “I want to just be Owen. And I want you just to be Liv, and we’ll see where it goes. I want to start over and do it the way I wanted to from the beginning, the real way.” He drops my hand and takes a deep breath before looking back up at me. “Hi,” he says, his cheeks flushed and his hand outstretched. “I’m Owen. I saw you across the bar, and I was hoping I could buy you a drink.”
I laugh and nod my head. “Okay, but I really want to kiss you right now.”
“Oh, Button, then let’s stop faking it and start something real.”
Epilogue
Owen
