Chapter 13

He kissed along my fingers, from knuckle to fingertip, and kept going.

"I knew early on that you'd put a location tracker on my phone.

"So I hired a professional team to stage the whole setup. I knew you were outside that night — I saw your coordinates in real time. The messages, the conversations — all of it was commissioned. Custom-made for you to read.

"Your running into Vanessa on the street with that man was a genuine coincidence. I talked to her afterward, and we decided to use it — let the situation play out.

"The first time you stopped yourself and ran from my room, you said you didn't want to ruin my happiness. So I made sure you could see that without you, I wouldn't have any."

I see.

So.

The blind date, the wounded pride, the injury — all staged. Only the feelings I poured out were real.

My hands started to itch again.

"Planning to hit me?"

He glanced at them, and obligingly removed his glasses.

"Go ahead."

I picked at my fingers with mild irritation.

He'd read me too well. The satisfaction was gone.

Still, I was frustrated.

"Did it have to be this complicated?

"If both our feelings were already there, if I liked you and you liked me — why not just say it out loud? Unless—

"You actually enjoyed watching me suffer? You wanted to watch me spiral and bleed out over you?"

"Of course not."

He reached up and ruffled my hair.

"Do you think if I'd just said it, we'd have gotten here so easily?

"Zoe. You don't know yourself as well as I know you.

"You give up too fast. Any breath of outside pressure and you retreat."

I wasn't convinced. So he reminded me.

"In primary school, you told some kids you were going to marry me. They made fun of you — that's weird, you like your own brother? I dealt with all of them. But when we walked home that afternoon, you refused to hold my hand no matter what.

"In middle school, you broke your leg. I carried you home from school on my back. It was going fine until one of your classmates said, Are you going to the orthopaedist? You screamed at them — what kind of thing is that to say? — and then insisted on getting down and walking on your own, wincing the entire way, rather than let me carry you another step.

"In year twelve, we went to a wedding together. My aunt teased us about being inseparable — you're not even blood, why not just marry each other? And you spent the rest of the afternoon sitting as far from me as physically possible."

He paused for a moment.

"There are more — so many more like that. For a long time, I genuinely believed you couldn't stand me.

"It wasn't until you started putting things in my water and climbing into my bed to sleep beside me that I finally understood.

"You liked me too."

The corner of his mouth curved.

He settled his chin on my shoulder.

"Orchestrating all of this served three purposes. The first: I wanted you to push past whatever mental block was holding you back and make a real decision to be with me — not a half-measure, but something you'd committed to completely.

"The second: through this whole process, you put so much of yourself into it — all that emotion, all that effort. That becomes a kind of sunk cost. It deepens how much I matter to you. It makes it harder to walk away.

"The third: I read somewhere that decisions people make on their own initiative are far less likely to be reversed."

He loosened his arms and leaned back, but his gaze stayed fixed on mine.

"Zoe, I know with certainty that I want to be with you permanently.

"So I was willing to spend time as the price — to buy a higher quality love, something more solid and less fragile.

"But making you angry and sad in the process — that part was wrong. That part was entirely my fault. You can punish me however you'd like, for as long as you need to. Until you're over it. Alright?"

I touched the tip of my nose.

I had been genuinely angry.

But then he'd brought up the past, and the guilt came flooding in before the anger could hold its ground.

He was right. Back then, I was young. Self-conscious. Far too worried about what other people thought.

So I'd loved him with one hand and beaten myself up for it with the other — and every time I broke, I broke loudly, in ways that had nothing to do with protecting myself and everything to do with ignoring him.

"Fine. Forget it."

I waved a hand.

"I've hurt you, you've hurt me. We're even. Neither of us is allowed to bring any of it up again. Deal?"

The corner of his mouth lifted.

He caged me in — no space left, no direction to go.

"Deal. Whatever my wife says."

"..."

At the end of the month, Ethan proposed.

Lily was there, clapping until her hands went red.

"What are the odds? You two absolute disasters found each other."

"What are you talking about?" Ethan appeared beside us.

Lily flinched and immediately backpedaled.

Ethan raised his glass, smiling with every appearance of warmth.

I ran my tongue along the back of my teeth.

I didn't know why, but ever since I'd seen his true face, the more he put on this polished, gentlemanly act for the world, the more I wanted to unravel him from it entirely.

He clearly knew exactly what I was thinking. He smiled back at me — slow and full of something deliberate.

The evening wound down. People drifted out one by one.

I clinked my glass against my fiancé's.

"You're incredibly good at pretending."

"Thank you," he said.

His lips barely moved when he smiled. The effect was flawless — easy, refined, the picture of a perfect partner.

Almost convincing enough to fool me.

My eyes darkened.

I leaned close and kept my voice low.

"Tonight — do you think you could wear that suit again, and use that exact same voice, and..."

I only got halfway through the sentence.

He'd already caught up.

"That one's got confetti and glitter on it, so it's not very clean right now. But I have another set that's nearly identical."

Even better.

I was already pulling him toward the door.

Tonight, we were going to try something new.

...

(The End)