“Did you argue?” Dad asked.
I shook my head. No. No, Ryder and I… we never argued, not really, not seriously. We never had. Not because we never disagreed, but because we’d always respected each other enough to listen, to see things from each other’s point of view.
It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I realized not all relationships were like that. Not allpeoplewere like that.
“He’s auditioning for a new role,” I said.
“I’d say that was great if you hadn’t cut yourself doing something you could have done with your eyes closed any other day,” Dad said. “I’ve never seen you nick yourself with a hand saw before. Not once.”
“It is great.”
Dad raised an eyebrow.
“It’s what he wanted.” I shrugged. It was. It’d been the whole point of…
“We were never really dating,” I confessed. It’d been stupid to let Dad believe it in the first place. What had I thought was going to happen?
That Ryder and I would just live happily ever after? Or that he’d buy that we broke up for some reason?
“I mean, not at first, not when you caught us together,” I continued. “I was trying to convince Ryder to let me help him.”
“I know,” Dad said.
I blinked at him. He knew?
“You know?”
“What? I’m old, not deaf. And you don’t have a lot of volume control when you really care about something. I heard you on the way over.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“But you…”
“I thought I was helping by not saying anything. Ryder needed a nudge to agree to let you help, and…”
“And?” I asked. There was more Dad wanted to say. He was as bad a liar as I was—I was stunned he’d managed to let me believe he really thought we were together.
But then, that was what I’d wanted him to believe. I’d wanted to help Ryder.
Some part of me wanted, even then, to pretend to be his boyfriend. I thought it was the closest I’d ever get to the real thing.
The fact that I’d gotten just a tiny bit closer was threatening to tear my heart in two.
“And you’ve loved him for as long as I can remember,” Dad said. “And he sat where you are once, over a decade ago, crying into a hot chocolate I made him over how he felt about you. I told him then to tell you how he felt because I’d seen the way you looked at him when he wasn’t looking. I’d seen the way you looked at him when you first brought him home to me with dirt on his face and leaves in his hair and the sweetest little smile anytime he looked at you,” he continued, sitting back and sighing.
Ryder had cried to Dad about me back then?
And Dad had never told me?
Well, of course he hadn’t. It was Ryder’s secret. He wouldn’t have shared that any more than he would have shared a secret of mine.
He was only doing it now because it wasn’t really a secret anymore.
“All I’ve ever wanted since the day I first held you was for you to be happy. Both of you, from the day I met Ryder and told myself he’d be my son-in-law one day. You’re both great kids, but something happens when you’re together. Magic. Call me a sentimental old man, but you glow like nothing else when Ryder’s in the room with you, and he does too.”
“Then why does he keep leaving?” I asked, harsher than I meant to.
It was more of a shock to me than Dad that I’d raised my voice, my heart suddenly pounding.
