Page 107 of Don't Go Faking My Heart

"Me either. But I've seen it enough times, I think we could figure it out." She flutters her eyelashes at me, and I want to jump across the table and kiss her senseless.

"Ashley Jane. What am I gonna do with you?"

"Maybe you should take seven minutes and figure it out."

Something flirtatious springs to the tip of my tongue, but I bite it back. I shift my hand so that my thumbs stroke her hands. Everything has changed in the last ten days. As close as we were before, we're so much closer now. She's peered past my walls, and I've let down my guard. Shed my armor.

And now that it's off, I can’t put it on again.

“I’m tired of pretending I’m pretending.”

“What do you mean?”

My heart thuds against my ribs. Over the last year, loving Ash has been both a wound and a balm. Loving her as intensely as I have has caused me acute pain day in and day out. Yet, knowing her, having her in my life has healed parts of me that I knew were broken but couldn't fix on my own. I've come to see the world differently through her. She's like Lasik for my soul. There was a universe of beauty at my fingertips that I couldn't access. For my whole life, I was sketching vistas in charcoal without knowing watercolors existed.

I know they exist now.

I've painted with them, seen their beauty, let them color my world.

I don't want to return to a life of black and white.

"I always knew you'd dated before we met, but learning about Philip … it overtook everything else in my mind. I hated it. I hated thinking of you with him. I couldn't stop picturing you two together. I couldn't stop thinking about the way he treated you."

"I've moved on, though."

"It's not just that. I hate thinking of you with anyone. It ties my stomach into knots. It makes me so sick, I can't eat, can't sleep. Every night, I have dreams—nightmares—of you with Philip or some faceless jerk, and it destroys me."

Tears fill her eyes. "That's what your nightmares are about? Me with someone else? Me?"

"Every night."

She covers her mouth with her hand. "I thought they were about Arlo."

"Arlo? He's a distant second. Nothing could be scarier than imagining you with anyone else but me." Ash’s face falls and curls cover it. I lift her chin with my finger. The tears in her eyes have spilled, leaving a glittering trail down her cheeks. "I may have started this ruse to protect you from Philip, but you have to know that everything I've said and done is a hundred percent real. I wasn't acting. Not for a second. If anything, this is the first time in the year I've known you that I haven't been acting."

Her eyebrows crease. "What do you mean?"

"Since the day we met, you … bewitched me."

"P&P reference. I approve."

I chuckle. "You were captivating and cool and so pretty, I lost the ability to speak. By the time I regained it, we were already friends, and I'd missed my chance."

"You hadn't missed your chance. Well, I guess the wet willy?—"

"I never wet willied you! It was one noogie."

"Well, you gave me a lot of figurative noogies, pal,” she says. I wince. “There were definite friend-zone vibes happening."

"Because I was acting."

"Acting like what, exactly?"

I stroke her cheek gently with my thumb, wiping away the memory of her tears. "Like I wasn't completely in love with you."

Her lips spread in a tender smile and she rests her head in my hand. "You really are smooth, Farm Boy."

"I love the way you call me Farm Boy," I say.

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