Page 25 of Don't Go Faking My Heart

Jane and Parker are in the conference room on what looks to be a Zoom call, and an intern with oversized headphones on pays us no mind. Ash's friends shoot us a concerned look, but they stay in their meeting.

"I've never seen you like that!" Ash gushes, walking backwards and pulling me into her office by my collar. I wish more than ever that she were pulling me into her office like this for another reason altogether. "You were so smooth and confident and a bit menacing. It was hot! How did you turn it on like that?"

It was hot?

My heart beats so hard against my chest, it bruises. How do I answer Ash? How do I say that the reason I was able to turn it on like that is because, for the first time in the year I've known her, I wasn't acting? I didn't have to hold back a thing. I didn't have to second guess or hesitate or plan every word out of my mouth to make sure she didn't see the naked truth.

That was me at my most unfiltered, my most unfettered, my most real.

"Philip was so mad! Did you catch how his eye kept twitching? That's his only giveaway. He can wear that cocky smile all day and blink that slow, creepy blink, but he's never been able to control that twitch."

When we get into her office, she kicks the door closed with her foot and drops into her chair, spinning in it. I lean against the wall, trying to hold myself together.

She is triumphant, and I'm in agony, and that's the way every minute of the rest of my life will play out now that I know what it's like to touch her cheek and the curve of her jaw, what it's like to bury my face in those curls and have my arm around her like she's mine and I'm hers.

I've done so many routine activities throughout my life that I know what muscle memory is. I could build a bookshelf in my sleep. I could whip up a website or design a logo without a second thought. At some point today, I rolled up the sleeves on my button down shirt and don't even remember doing it.

I've held Ash one time. I've stroked her cheek and let my lips glide across her skin one time. Those motions have imprinted into the sinews and fibers of every single muscle in my body.

My muscles will never forget.

And my heart—the hardest working muscle in the human body—will never recover.

The Janes have not been subtle about how much they're rooting for me, but they've also hinted that Ash has a thing for bad boys.

I thought they meant biker dudes who grunt a lot.

I didn't realize they meant American Psycho.

If that's really what she's attracted to—money and status and faces that deserve to get punched—I have no shot with her. I've imagined a scenario where she's too reluctant to date me because she's dumped every guy she's ever dated and doesn't want to risk losing me, too. I know people with that love story. It's a classic for a reason.

Meeting him makes me realize that will not be our love story.

Meeting him makes me think we won't have one at all.

The office door opens and closes as Lou rushes in. She darts straight for Ash, hugs her, and then holds her shoulders. "What happened? Are you okay?"

The look Ash gives her friend is appreciative but … defensive, too. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be interviewing musicians for your tour?"

"Like I care about findin' a bass player when Philip is in our town? Also, if that man so much as touches you, I will tear him apart with my teeth."

“He hugged me,” Ash says, “but?—”

“Did you say he hugged you?” Millie bursts through the door, her red hair flaming with a righteous fury at odds with her usually calm therapist vibe. "I will cut that man open and boil his entrails like a witch. How dare he show up here?"

"Get in line," Lou says, an echo of her text.

"Why do you always get the front of the line?" Millie asks.

"That's the rule of dibs," Lou says.

"Dibs has to be called in front of other people. I said I want to go all medieval on him. Ergo, I called dibs."

"But I saw him first."

"But you didn't call it.”

Lou blows a raspberry with her lips. "Possession is nine-tenths of the law."

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