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“What did she say?” I ask, oddly curious myself.
“She said…” Her eyes stray away from mine. End up on the floor. “She said that she broke up with you because of me.”
“She shouldn’t have told you that.”
Dana flinches at the force in my voice. I instantly regret it. “Is it true?” she asks.
I nod, unable to lie. I’ve never lied about it, technically. I told her I had other priorities. That wasn’t untrue.
“Why?” she asks, her brow furrows with confusion. “What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“I must have done something to break up the Homecoming king and queen, Connor.”
“It wasn’t anything you did, Dana. It was…” I hesitate, my heart sinking deeper into my stomach. “It was the way I… I don’t know. The way I looked at you. Like you were always the most important person in the room. According to her, anyway.”
“Why would you look at me like that?” she asks, her voice shaking. So unsure. So blind.
It’s cute.
I laugh. “You really don’t know?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” she says. “What don’t I know that’s so obvious to everyone else?!”
Fuck it.
“That I love you.”
She drops the bottle. It bounces once on the carpet before settling, the plastic cap still locked in place.
“Oh,” she says.
“That I’m…” My throat tightens as the words spill out of me, but I force them out. I never realized how much I wanted to say them out loud until this moment. How much I needed to. “That I’m in love with you. Always have been.”
She remains so still. Staring. Waiting.
“Dana,” I say.
“Hm?”
“Breathe.”
She sucks in a breath, her chest shuddering as she exhales. “I, uh, thank you. I didn’t realize I’d stopped doing that.”
I take a step toward her, bending down to pick the bottle up off the floor. I place it on the desk next to mine as I carefully close the gap between us. She looks at me as if she’s never seen me before in her life, but she doesn’t stop me as I reach out and touch her cheek.
“Keep breathing,” I tease.
She laughs, her chest rising and falling steadily once again. “You might have to keep reminding me.”
“I will.”
I run my thumb along her chin and her lips part. So beautiful. So perfect. How did I ever think I could live my entire life without knowing her — really knowing her? In that Biblical sense.
I lean closer, ready and willing to take…
“Wait—” Dana eases a step back. “Connor, hold on.”
