Page 88 of Lessons in Faking
And there it was.
There it was.
There. It. Was.
My sense of disbelief was almost entirely overshadowed by relief, gratitude, joy.
My gaze snapped to Dylan, letting my phone fall into my lap. A wide smile spread across my face.
“Thank you!” I screeched, wishing I could jump him without the possibility of breaking a rib again. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
“See?” he whispered into my hair. “Nothing to worry about.”
He said that without having seen my grade. Whether I had barely passed with a C or aced the exam seemed to be none of his concern. Whatever grade I was content with, he’d be proud of too.
“You really showed Shaw, didn’t you?”
“Technically...” My head lifted from his chest, a smirk on my lips as I looked at him. “I showed you too.” Hisquirked brow made me go on. “You thought I was a hopeless case. You even told Shaw I was!”
His face softened as he remembered. “I would never do that.”
“But you told me—”
“Athalia,” he sighed deeply. “There wasn’t a second in all this where I didn’t believe in you.”
I think my heart got bigger simply to let more of him in.
“I knew how smart you were before you ever stepped foot into my office, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind you wouldn’t thrive with a little guidance and the right... motivation.”
“So you lied to me? About the Shaw thing?”
“Of course I did.” And his honesty—how unapologetic he was about it—was so relieving.
“What else?” I wondered, my head tilting in curiosity and amusement alike. “Did you lie about, I mean.”
He thought for a second, then looked back at me. Shrugged. “Hating you.”
“Hating me?”
“Probably even just disliking you a little bit. But I lied to myself about that for longer.”
The realization of that settled. I wished I could say the same back, have this be our full-circle moment, where we’d realize we had both been undyingly in love with each other from the moment we had laid eyes on the other.
Not that we’d saidI love you.Those three words slipped out so soon in my previous relationships; in this one, I wanted to savor them until I’d burst if I didn’t tell him. AndI think none of his relationships had lasted long enough to even consider it. In a way, this was uncharted territory for both of us.
And maybe that made it easier.
Refraining from saying the words didn’t mean we weren’t still making it known every single day. Every time he carried me to bed after I fell asleep on the couch, every bad joke he laughed at, every meal he cooked when I suggested takeout saidI love youall over again.
I just smiled at his words, my nose crinkling. “I knew you’d always been obsessed with me,” I joked, lightheartedness replacing the silence his admission had left behind. Dylan’s eyes rolled in that incredibly endearing way before he pressed a kiss on my forehead and hurled himself out of bed.
“God,” he sighed as he stretched, giving me an incredible view of his body in nothing but boxer briefs. The bruising across his ribs had gone down, and the pale blue left behind was much less menacing. “I forget how much of a pain in the ass you are sometimes.”
Which was just another one of the million ways of sayingI love youhe had adopted.
I love you too, Dylan McCarthy Williams.
Epilogue
