I reach for her hand, my gut tightening when she doesn’t pull away but instead allows me to hold on to her.
“Please,” I say softly. “Please know that this, what’s going on between us, is so fucking palpable, so goddamn authentic that it’s buried itself in my veins. That my idiocy has turned into something more than I could have ever imagined.” I tilt her chin up so she can look me in the eyes. “If you decide to walk out on this, to say you don’t want me anymore, then I’ll understand. It’ll burn me for the rest of my life, but I’ll understand. Just know, Renley, that the small amount of time we’ve had together has made the greatest impact on me. And no matter what you decide, I plan on telling my father that I don’t want what has been designed for me. That I’m not the man he thought I was, that I was playing a role I wasn’t meant to play, because of you. Because of what you’ve taught me, shown me. I don’t want to go back to that old life, where it felt like I was paralyzed in place. I’m a different person because you allowed that.”
Tears spill down her cheeks, but her eyes remain locked on mine.
“You gave me the opportunity, love.” I bring her hand up to my lips and I gently kiss her knuckles like I always do. “You believed in me when no one else really did.”
She blinks and then looks away, letting out a deep breath. I brace myself for what I don’t want to hear, for the words that could rip my heart right from my chest.
And after a few arduous seconds that feel like minutes, her gaze meets mine again and she says, “I like you, Theo.”
My heart rams in my chest, waiting for the “but.”
I like you, Theo…but…
I prepare myself for this to come to an end, for her to pull away, but…she doesn’t.
“I don’t like how this started,” she says softly. “I don’t like how I was a tool for you to use.”
“That’s not what?—”
She places her fingers over my mouth, silencing me. “What you just confessed made me feel like that, even if that wasn’t your intention.”
I nod. “I understand, and I’m sorry, Renley. I really fucking am.”
Her eyes dart between mine, as if she’s trying to read my soul in this very moment. “I know that you’re sorry.”
“But do you believe me?”
She wets her lips and then finally nods. “I do.”
Relief washes through me, but I don’t celebrate yet. Just because she believes me doesn’t mean she forgives me.
“Do you want some time to think through everything? I don’t want to pressure you?—”
“How does this have anything to do with Rupert?” she asks, tilting her head to the side.
Confused for a moment, because I want to work things out with her, not talk about Rupert, I take a second to think over the conversation I had with him.
I drag my fingers over my scruff. “It was kind of weird. He said he wanted to call my father and tell him that I had feelings for you.” I don’t mention the love part because I think that would freak her out and I don’t know if I’m ready to admit that. “And we got in a fight over that, because I’m not ready to have that conversation with my father. I will if I have to, but I fear what he might do. He can be very vindictive. We went back and forth about that, and it felt like he was trying to pick a fight, trying to piss me off, which he did. So when I called him out on it, he saidthat I was basically being an arsehole and that I’ve been ignoring him. Which, he’s right, I have been, but we didn’t come out here to fuck around, we came out here to meet you, which I pointed out. And then he said something about a last hurrah. He took off and that’s where it ended. I’m telling you everything because I don’t want you to hear it from someone else. If you walk away, I want it to be because of the actions that I’ve been honest with you about not because you heard something from someone else.”
“Are you always like this?” she asks.
“Always like what?” I ask, feeling like I’m out on a balance beam above a pit of alligators waiting to tear me into pieces as I hold on to her every word.
“This honest, this communicative?”
I shake my head. “Honestly, no. I think this is the first time I’ve been really real with someone other than Rupert. And I know it’s because of you and how you make me feel. I don’t want to lose this, Renley.” I take both of her hands in mine. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I…I don’t know what to say.”
I swallow the lump forming in my throat.
“Tell me what you’re feeling.”
“My brain is warring with itself, because on one hand, I knew something like this was going to happen. Happiness doesn’t just occur for me. It’s not something I’ve ever truly lived with. There have been moments of joy in my life, but true happiness, where I wake up with a smile on my face, when I feel like everything is going to be okay and I’m protected…that doesn’t occur, so when I felt it with you, it was almost too good to be true.”
I almost tell her it’s not, but I want her to be able to speak her mind, so I don’t interrupt her.
