Page 142 of How To Not Need You

And Jake just drops them into the conversation like they aren't capable of causing complete neurological failure.

I go completely still. Elsie told me he loved me. Harper told me he loved me. More than once, actually, and with the kind of smug certainty that made me want to throw things at both of them.

I ignored them.

Obviously.

Hearing it from Jake is different.

Mainly because I can't tell Jake he's imagining things when he's the one doing the loving.

Something that makes my brain produce a sound like a dial-up modem disconnecting.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he says.

“That’s helpful because I think my brain just stopped working.”

“Take your time.”

I do what I always do. I start listing reasons.

“I have trust issues,” I say. “Massive, documented, clinically significant trust issues. The kind that come with footnotes and warning labels and at least three therapists shaking their heads in disappointment.”

“I noticed,” Jake says and I continue to list all the reasons he should NOT love me.

“Running away. I run. It’s what I do. I see a problem and my first instinct is to create distance between myself and the source of the potential pain. It’s not mature. It’s not healthy. It’s what I’ve got.”

“May have seen that too.”

“I don’t…” I stop.

Fuck.

This is the big one.

The rule behind all the other rules. The one I’ve held onto for years because if I don’t need anyone, they can’t take anything important with them when they leave.

I look at Jake.

“I don’t need you.”

Jake looks at me. The fading light catches the lines around his eyes, the stubble on his jaw, the quiet certainty in his expression.

“I know,” he says.

I stare at him. “That’s it?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.”

His hand finds mine on the step between us. His fingers are warm. There’s a callus on his thumb I’ve felt a hundred times, from rope work, probably, or tools, or whatever firefighters do with their hands when they’re not holding them out to women who are actively pushing them away.

“You don’t need me, Liv.” His thumb moves over my knuckles, slow, deliberate. “I don’t need you either.”

I pull back slightly, ouch. “That sounds awful.”

“I’m getting there.”