Page 122 of The Problem with Dating

“Real or fake?” he whispered against my mouth, his gaze deep and mesmerizing with a timid warmth that drew me closer.

“Real,” I replied.

Oh, so real.

After a few more hours of dancing and celebration, the beautiful couple raced through the sparklers, giggling nonstop with one another as they entered their getaway car. Across from me in the sparkler line was Alex. Laughing as he watched his best friend race toward his happily ever after. I’d never seen a person seem so utterly overjoyed for another. The love he had for Noah was so loud through the way his eyes showcased said affection.

Then he looked at me.

His eyes locked with mine across the sparklers and his lips turned into the biggest smile I’d yet to see from him.

My cheeks felt as if they would burst from joy seeing how full of life he’d been. There were a million reasons he should’ve felt off that night. He was faced with people who hurt him to his core. People who broke his heart and kicked around the shattered pieces. Yet he didn’t fall backward into the traps they’d tried to set for him. He rose and was the bigger person.

Daddy was right—Alex had a solid foundation. He didn’t lean when the world tried to shove him. He stayed firmly planted in place. He stood tall against adversity. He did not falter.

But me, on the other hand?

I crumpled solely from his smile. I melted from his eyes. And I kept falling, falling, falling for his soul.

As Alex looked at me, he hadn’t even known it was happening, that I was falling so deeply for him.

Once the sparklers died down, he crossed over to me, took my sparkler, and tossed it into the bin with the rest of the sticks. He pulled me into a hug and whispered a thank you to me.

“For what?”

“Being the best wedding date I’ve ever had.”

I felt like crying into him as those words left his mouth. At that moment, I wanted us to be real. I wanted the chance to feel the type of love he might’ve someday given to me if we weren’t wrapped in a fake fairy tale. I wanted to see what it meant to be loved by a man such as him. I didn’t want to break his heart, but I wanted to witness it heal as he healed my own. I wanted the old parts of our hurts to be drowned by the new discovery of our happiness. I wanted him. All of him. Every piece, every drop. I wanted to drown in his love.

But we weren’t real.

“Don’t let go yet,” I urged, burying myself against his body. Feeling his warmth, his heat radiating against my chilled bones as the autumn breeze pushed through the atmosphere.

“What is it?” he asked as I hugged him tightly. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I confessed. “And I think that’s the problem.”

“The problem is that nothing’s wrong?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Because Cole is no longer a concern, and the wedding is over, which is why we began this fake dating thing. So now I have this terrible fear that at the stroke of midnight, we’ll go back to whatever it was before we made this arrangement, and I don’t know if I want to go back to that just yet. I just…I want to pretend some more with you. I just want a little bit more.”

“Okay,” he said, pulling away from me. He took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders. He held his hand out toward me. “Let’s go home and pretend just a little bit more.”

CHAPTER36

Alex

After the wedding weekend, Yara had full control of my thoughts.

When I wasn’t with her, I thought about her.

When I was with her, I dreaded the moment she’d leave.

Who was I as of late? When did I allow my heart to defrost once more? And what was I supposed to do with all these new feelings? I couldn’t get enough of her. She was becoming my strong morning coffee and my favorite late-night gin.

When I finally hit my breaking point, I reached out for some friendly advice.

I lay on my couch, talking it out to get some help or feedback on my emotions. “You see, I worry that if I tell her how I’m feeling, I’d be opening myself up for heartbreak again. And that sucks, you know what I mean? But then again, if I don’t open myself up to her, she might never know, and she might move on to someone else. Which would suck too, you know? Because the idea of her being with someone else makes me want to rage even though we aren’t real. We aren’t real. But it feels real. What am I supposed to do, man? Any advice would be helpful,” I said, sighing.

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