Page 59 of Not Your Valentine
“No, I wanted a fake relationship for the reasons I told you, but as we spent more time together, my feelings changed.”
He nods, and then a slow smile overtakes his face. It’s fucking luminous. No other word for it. Taylor smiles frequently, but this is one I’ve never seen on him before.
And I know. That smile tells me how he feels.
Before I can say anything more or close the distance between us, he opens the box in his hand, as though it’s an answer to my question.
It takes me a few seconds to realize what I’m looking at, but then I release a burst of laughter. “Is that a human heart made of cake?”
“Yeah. It’s red velvet cake, and you can buy human heart molds. My roommate had to help me, though, because I’m not a very experienced baker.”
I bring the box to my dining room table, remove the cake from the box, and admire it some more. It’s not a hyper-realistic cake that you could actually mistake for a human organ—which is for the best, to be honest—but it’s still impressive. A zillion times better than anything I could have made, as the last three hours (yes, three hours) have proven.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
“I love it.”
I wrap my arms around him and kiss the crap out of him.
It’s not the first time I’ve kissed Taylor, but this time, we’re not in a fake relationship. This time, we’re working our way toward something real.
Because obviously that’s what he wants if he made me this cake.
He looks over my shoulder. “Is that a heart-shaped pan? And a cupid garland on the floor, next to a package of red balloons?”
“Uh, maybe?”
He laughs softly.
“But I didn’t buy pink and red glitter,” I say, “even though I could have gotten a very, very good deal on it. I have my limits.”
He’s still laughing. “So, what happened with the cake? Did it make it to the oven?”
“Yeah, but it’s woefully overbaked. Turns out I don’t know shit about baking.”
“I can’t believe I brought you a heart cake while you were trying to do the same thing.”
He smiles at me fondly, one hand on my shoulder. With his other hand, he twirls a strand of my hair around his finger, and God, it’s good to feel him touching me again. It hasn’t been all that long, but I missed this.
“Why did you break off our fake relationship?” he asks.
“Aside from being afraid to tell you the truth, I felt so guilty about dragging you into the mess that is my life. Those comments online…”
“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I can handle them. You’re worth it.”
I exhale in relief, though a smidgen of guilt remains. “When did you realize your feelings for me?”
“Last February—that’s when it started.”
On the night we went to Whitney’s, he said he’d had a crush on me for many years, and when I saw his cake, some small part of me wondered if that was the truth.
To be honest, I’m rather glad it’s not. I don’t love the idea of someone pining after me for a decade or more. It feels like too much to live up to.
“After the video,” he says, “I thought, ‘I’d be way better to her than Charlie ever was.’ It came out of nowhere, and the night you spent on my couch—I don’t think you remember, but I tucked you in and—”
“I do remember. I thought I’d imagined it, though.”
“I wished that when you woke up the next morning, I could hold you and kiss you.”
