Page 57 of Pretend I’m Yours
I had already blown it once with him. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.
“Do you mean it?” I asked. I turned around to face him, sitting on the bed. I didn’t care if we were both still naked. I didn’t care about anything anymore. Except, of course, for him to know the truth. And, it was time that I know the truth, too.
I wanted to know how he felt, and I was going to make sure he knew how I felt about him.
He looked at me in surprise.
“What?” he replied.
“Do you really mean that you don’t want it to end?” I asked. “I love you, Drake. I have for a long time now, and I’ve wanted to tell you, but I was afraid that you didn’t feel the same way, and I didn’t know if I could handle that. But, it’s true. I don’t want you to go. I really don’t.”
I was rambling, and the tears had welled up in my eyes. There was no stopping them now. They ran freely down my cheeks as I spoke, but it felt good to finally get the truth out. I wasn’t sure how he was going to take it after everything, but he finally would know how I felt.
“I mean it,” he said at last. “I love you, too, Hannah. And I’ve felt the same way. I don’t want to go either, but I’m not sure how we’re going to make this work. You know how your parents feel.”
“I don’t give a damn how they feel!” I said flatly. “I love you, and I want to be happy. I’m not going to walk away from the man I love because of my parents!”
“Do you mean it?” he asked me suddenly. “Really?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of changes for us, but I don’t care. I don’t care if they take my money, if they make us move out of here, and if they want to disown me. All I care about is being happy, and I know that means a life spent with you.”
Drake grinned. He kissed me tenderly then bent over and grabbed his boxers. “Then I think I better get dressed, because I’ve got some unpacking to do.”
I smiled. “I’ll give you a hand if you like.”
“I would like that,” he replied. “But this time, I’m unpacking in your room.”
“Deal,” I said.
Epilogue
Drake – Six Months Later
“Please, leave the bottle,” I said with a smile. It had taken me some time to get used to these upper scale restaurants, but now that I frequented them a couple times per week, I felt at home. We didn’t go to the restaurant where Anna Marie worked. I didn’t want to see my ex, and I knew Hannah didn’t care one way or the other.
She was happy to be with me, as always, and didn’t really care where we were. She’d always been that way, since the day I officially moved in with her. We still argued from time to time whether we should count our time together as starting from the day we met at the club, or when we finally told each other the truth about how we felt.
“You moved in the next day! Of course we were together since then!” Hannah would argue.
“But we were just faking it! I wasn’t actually with you until after your ex was arrested.” I’d shoot back.
“We were sleeping together,” she’d remind me. “That happened not long after you moved in.”
“But friends with benefits is a thing. There are people who sleep together for years and never officially end up together,” I’d counter.
“Semantics!” she said with a laugh. “They are together to some extent!”
“We’re all together to some extent,” I told her. It was always the end of the argument. She knew there was no changing my mind, and I knew there was no changing hers. It didn’t really matter anyway. We could have been together a week, a month, or thirty years for all I cared.
As long as we were together now, I was happy.
And boy, was I happy. I loved the look of the ring I put on her finger so much more than the one she had worn when we were staging a marriage. So much had changed for us in such a short amount of time but seeing that on her finger reminded me of the promises we’d finally made each other.
Promises neither of us were going to break.
Just a couple of weeks after I moved in to stay, we received a letter from her parents. They were giving us thirty days to find our own place, and we would have to get out of their penthouse. It did belong to them, after all.
Hannah had officially written them out of her life, she was more than happy to oblige. They were unable, however, to touch any of the money that was in her trust fund.
