Page 202 of Built to Fall
I know I love him because he’s the only one who has enough of me to break my heart without ever laying a cruel hand on it.
The only one who could ruin me without ever meaning to, without ever doing anything unforgivable.
Because he has me—has had me—in all the quiet, unseen ways that matter. The spaces no one else bothered to look for.
The pieces of me I didn’t even realize I was offering until it was too late. He doesn’t have to lie or cheat to wreck me in the same way Gage did.
All he has to do is leave.
All he has to do isnot choose me, and it would feel like the end of the world.
“I love you too,” Grant says easily, as if he’s beenwaitingfor the moment where he’s able to. “I don’t love youdespiteanything. I love youbecauseof everything. All the sharp, brilliant, documentary, and Greek-mythology-loving parts of you—they’re ones I’ll never let go of.”
He pauses, letting the truth in his words settle like how the lake house settles early in the morning. The same way he settles beside me every night and into the day with me.
“This key?” he adds, nodding toward my hand. “It’s just the start. I’d give you everything if you asked. That’s how much I love you.”
It doesn’t feel like the end of the world. It feels like a breath of fresh air. Here in this diner, I finally feel myself again.
And I’m sure some people would say that I love him to death.
But in reality, I think he’s loved me back to life.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
LINA
Amidst all of the chaos that is constantly surrounding our apartment, sometimes there’s calm in the midst of the storm. It’s one we’ve been finding more and more often in the recent weeks.
Since everything happened with Eden and Jack, and then Kara, and then Meredith, it almost makes me feel as though something is looming in the distance, and I’ve been holding my breath waiting for it.
“Have you been using your key?” Kara asks when I sit on the swing beside her.
I don’t know how none of us have noticed before, but last week sometime, Eden and Meredith found a park along the walking trail behind our apartment complex. It has since piqued all of our interests, and we’ve spent quite a bit of time here after class and in whatever spare time we've had.
It was when we were here sometime the other week that I told them about how Grant gave me a key to his place.
“I don’t even have to because he never locks his door.”
While I haven’t technically used it, I have taken the key as a rite of passage to enter his apartment whenever I want.
“So what did he give it to you for then?” Meredith asks from the other swing.
“I think it was more him trying to prove that he trusts me.”
Eden is spinning on the merry-go-round a few feet away. I’ve watched her almost slingshot herself off it at least a dozen times, but she still seems to be having fun. “I thinkit was a romantic gesture.”
“Well, he doeslove me.” It’s been a running joke between us ever since Grant said“I love you”in front of everyone while he was leaving our apartment last week.
Except it’s not a joke. Grant does love me.
Really, they want a reason to tease me aboutsomething.
“Yeah, he’s made that fairly obvious.” Meredith rolls her eyes. She pretends to hate it all. She scoffs every time Grant brings us ice cream or cleans the snow off my car for me early in the morning.
But I see the way she glances at us on the couch, or how she lingers in my bedroom doorway a little longer whenever he’s over.
I think it’s because she misses Braxton.
