Page 143 of How To Not Need You

“Please do.”

He doesn’t let go of my hand.

“I can raise Tilly. I can look after this house. I can go to work and cook terrible pancakes and live my life without you.” His thumb moves across my knuckles.

“I don’t need you to make my life work.” He pauses. “I want you in it.”

Fuck.

That’s… Fuck. I had arguments prepared. Good ones too. I don’t need you. I was fine before you. I’ll be fine without you. I can look after myself. All the usual hits from Liv Carter’s Greatest Emotional Avoidance Strategies.

Except he isn’t asking me to need him. He’s asking me to choose him. And that is a very different fucking thing. I look down at our hands. His wrapped around mine. Mine holding on just as tightly.

Well. There goes my plausible deniability.

“I love you too.” The words come out before I can reconsider them.

Then, because my brain is apparently determined to narrate its own malfunction in real time:

“Fuck.”

Jake’s eyebrows go up. “What?”

“I love you.”

“That’s what the fuck was for?”

“Obviously,” I press the heel of my free hand against my forehead. “This is horrifying.”

He laughs. I glare at him. “I’ve just confessed my love for you. Some respect for the gravity of the situation would be appreciated.”

“Sorry.” He is very clearly not sorry.

“You’re smiling.”

“You love me.”

“I'm reconsidering my stance on the matter.”

“Bit late for that.”

“I take things back all the time.”

“Not this.” That stupid certainty. That quiet, steady confidence that has been wearing me down for six months without ever once asking me to be anyone other than exactly who I am.

I could argue. I could make another joke. I could probably find at least six reasons this is still a terrible idea.

Instead, I kiss him.

Me.

Voluntarily.

No emotional emergency. No alcohol. No convenient excuse involving physical attraction and poor decision-making.

I actually lean across the space I’ve spent the last half hour carefully maintaining, grab Jake Reid by the jaw and kiss him because I love him and apparently this is who I am now.

Horrifying.