Page 140 of Fake it ’Til Fall

“You don’t know that. He’s delicate.”

“He stole a donut.”

“Everyone copes differently.”

I drag a blanket into the hallway. Puck circles once, offended on principle, then drops onto it with enough drama to make Daisy look professional.

When I close the door, the room changes.

The rain keeps working at the glass. The house creaks somewhere beyond the walls. Daisy swallows, and I hear it because I’m listening to everything she does now. Every breath. Every shift of her feet. Every small betrayal of what she wants and doesn’t want to admit.

I stay by the door, one hand still on the knob. “We don’t have to keep going.”

“I know.”

“If we do, this isn’t for the lie.”

“I know.”

“It’s not because we’re trapped here.”

“We’re not trapped. You already said we could leave.”

“And?”

“And I stayed.” She takes one step toward me. “I chose that.”

My hand tightens on the knob.

She takes another step.

“I’m choosing this too.”

Fuck.

The words go straight through me.

No room to twist them. No joke to hide inside. No fake relationship, no shared room, no family audience, no convenient excuse. Just Daisy, flushed and nervous and brave enough to say what I haven’t earned from her yet.

“Daisy.”

“If you say my name like that again, I’m going to assume you’re trying to be responsible, and I will have to take legal action.”

“What action?”

“I don’t know yet. My legal team is composed of the romance section and a woman named Bea. We’re dangerous.”

I let go of the door.

Every inch between us feels charged now. Claimed by the choice we keep making in smaller and smaller ways. The choice not to leave. The choice not to laugh it off. The choice to stand here with all this want between us and stop pretending it’s only part of the act.

I close the distance.

She meets me halfway.

The second kiss isn’t careful.

Careful ended somewhere between her saying I’m choosing this and my hands finding her face again. She lifts onto her toes, and I catch her waist, pulling her against me as her mouth opens under mine. Her hands slide up my chest, over my shoulders, into my hair, and when her nails scrape the back of my neck, my whole body locks around the need to have more of her.