A better, braver version of me would have reached for that, would’ve poked gently at the margins of it, asked how long he’d been carrying the guilt, asked if anyone had ever told him none of it was his fault. But the cowardly me sitting beside him just continued to look at him. His brown curls were stirring in the breeze from the cracked window, and his posture was startlingly loose, one hand resting on the wheel, the other drifting over the clutch lazily. The light melted him into someone I almost didn’t recognize, illuminating all the places I’d once mistaken for cold and untouchable. He seemed suddenly refracted, like someone had tilted a prism, and colors I’d never noticed before were slowly announcing themselves.
His words from yesterday rose again, uninvited but impossible to ignore:If I were capable of being that for anyone...I think I would choose that person to be you.
And I thought,I think I would choose that person to be me, too.
I’d always believed love needed to arrive with theatrics—grand speeches, sweeping gestures, some cinematic swell of feeling. It was possible I’d sprinted to that conclusion because I’d spent my entire life begging for crumbs of fondness from my family, mistaking scarcity for proof that love needed to be loud to be real. But maybe that glittery, movie-scene genre of romance was only one type of love. Maybe there was another type—quieter, steadier, no less true.
Because somewhere between the brutally honest confessions and the long car rides and the way he always seemed to notice the things I never said out loud, I was beginning to wonder if I’d been wrong about Khalifa. He wasn’t emotionally unavailable. He wasn’t distant or cold or incapable. He wascareful—still on the surface, pulsing with entire worlds underneath.
Maybe I didn’t need some flamboyant, storybook display or a man who wore his heart like a billboard. Maybe what I needed—what I’d been craving without realizing—wasthis: someone who showed unconditional affection through consistent, tender, intentional gestures. Someone who was fluent inme, in my edges and habits, who remembered the big things without trying and the little things without being asked. Someone who didn’t erupt with emotion but offered it gently, more unwavering, like it was something precious he’d saved only for me.
Maybe what I needed was him, exactly as he was.
All I knew for sure was that when Khalifa offered devotion in those soft, intimate touches, the impact of his passion echoed louder than any dramatic proclamation ever could.
“You’re staring,” he said, eyes fixed on the road like he wasn’t calling me out at all.
“I’m napping,” I countered, face still smushed against the seat.
“With your eyes open?”
“Mhm. Gotta make sure you’re not secretly luring me into the woods to bury me alive.”
“I don’t think so.” His mouth twitched. “Iknowwhat napping Lillian looks like. And creeping Lillian. And hangry, and annoyed, and—”
“Is there a Lilly Handbook I didn’t authorize?” I snapped, lifting my head just enough to glower at him.
“Yes,” he said immediately. “You gave it to me on our second date.”
I groaned. “Oh my God, you actually read that thing? I figured you were using the pages as emergency toilet paper. Which, by the way, is dangerous—the colored ink can permanently stain your butt. Very hard to explain at doctor appointments.”
He laughed, loud and unrestrained, the tips of his ears turning cherry red. “Every time I think I have you all figured out, you go and say the weirdest, most unhinged thing imaginable.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
His lips softened into something that wasn’t quite a smile but was definitely aimed at me. “No,” he said. “It’s not.”
Before I could bask in that for too long, he reached over and plucked my hat straight off my head, tossing it into the back seat.
“Um, excuse me?” I grabbed for it. “It’s part of the outfit.”
He gave me a knowing look. “Lillian Tariq doesn’t hide.” He hesitated, then added faintly, almost shy, “Besides...I could barely see your face.”
A buttery heat pooled low in my belly, whichcouldhave just been the pancakes staging a volatile comeback and not something far less explainable.
I cleared my throat, suddenly hyperaware of my reflection in the window. “Fine. Whatever. Can you at least tell me if we’re going somewhere where other people will see me?”
“Yes,” he said.
I frowned. “Yes, you’ll tell me, or yes, people will see me?”
“Both.”
I dragged my purse into my lap and flipped down the visor mirror to start damage control—swiping on a little blush, a little gloss, anything to make me look less like someone who’d been emotionally steamrolled for the past twenty-four hours.
He glanced over, amused. “What are you doing?”
“Making myself more presentable,” I muttered, lifting my mascara wand. I’d barely gotten one stroke on when he swerved, the tiniest jerk of the wheel, and the mascara jabbed me right on the nose.
