Page 70 of The Reality of Wanting Him

Liam said that he couldn't marry metoday.Not that he never wanted to see me again.

He said he couldn’t say yes to someone who doesn’t choose him,but I do. I would choose Liam over the money in a heartbeat. I would choose him over anyone and anything.

And I intend to do just that.

If Liam needs me to prove to him that I’ll choose him every day for the rest of our lives, I will. Even if we never actually get married. Even if I never touch another cent of my parents’ money to show him how much more he means to me than it ever did.

I look down at my finger and twist the ring he gave me, theone his mother made for his father. He wouldn’t have given it to me if he didn’t love me, if he didn’t want to build a life with me.

I promised him my future, and I intend to keep that promise.

If he needs some space to cool down, I’ll give it to him.

But I’m not giving up on us.

I promised to help them on their farm, and I have a feeling I know someone who might be slightly more willing to hear my side of things when I explain how much I love his son and just want him to be happy.

He might even let me stay with him until Liam is ready to talk.

Liam deserves to be happy, and I’m selfish enough to think I could be his happily ever after. Until he explicitly tells me to get out of his life, I’m not going anywhere.

32

LIAM

Losing my mom at ten years old felt like the world cracked in half. At the time, it felt like my dad and I were stranded on the wrong side of life without her. It was a slow, excruciating kind of pain, one that built and built as she grew weaker and weaker until it finally swallowed her whole. And then, just like that, she was gone.

We knew it was coming, but knowing didn’t make it hurt any less. Nothing prepared us for that kind of loss. The grief, the absence, the helplessness of it all—knowing that nothing we did could have changed the outcome, that no amount of love or bargaining could have bought us more time.

But at least I understood it. Understood losing her to something no one could fight forever. Even if I fucking hated cancer with every fiber of my being, I could wrap my head around what was happening. I had time to process it.

None of it was her fault. She fought. She held on as long as she could, for me, for my dad. And ultimately, it wasn’t her choice to leave. Losing her was like a slow-burning fire we all saw coming but were powerless to stop.

Losing Blake was like a sudden, violent explosion—unexpected and over before I could make sense of the wreckage.

Because while I’m positive my mom would have never left if she had a choice, Blake did. He made a choice.

And it wasn’t me.

Well, he wouldn’t have chosen me if he wasn’t in a blind dating situation with an ultimatum to push him to date me. A man.

Losing someone to lies and deception, to the reality that I was never the first choice from the start? That I was just a means to an end, or a loophole? This is a different kind of pain. One that feels like it’s clawing its way through my chest, hollowing me out from the inside.

I wasso sureabout us. So sure he was my future, that he was it for me. I let myself believe that what we had was real. That I’d found my person. I like him so much. Ilovehim, and I thought I made it clear. He said the same words back to me, even if I said them first. But the second his mother’s words sank in, and I had to question what I really meant to him, it felt like the ground was ripped out from under me.

Now, I’m waking up alone in my bed. Again. When I thought I would be waking up next to my husband. We should be wrapped up together while he asks for five more minutes. But he isn’t here. It’s just me and my broken heart that won’t allow me to focus on anything other than how much I miss what I thought we had.

Even though Blake was only here for three days, I’d built an entire life in my head of our future. Working together to expand the farm with the money we made from the show. Hanging out with the chickens and building them what would probably have been a chicken castle more so than a coop, knowing Blake. Drinking coffee together on the front porch, cooking together in the kitchen, and falling asleep together in our bed.

But, obviously, he’s not here. It’s the third day of waking up without hearing a word from him.

He’s going to be asleep for hours still, on his fancy mattress, in his expensive condo, with all his money. He’ll probably find a wife soon, just like his mother wants, and he’ll forget all about his bi experiment with me.

I go through the motions of my morning routine, but my mind always drifts back to thoughts of Blake. I’ve been throwing myself into work, trying to bury the pain and heartbreak, but it’s no use. I’ve made a list of things to fix that don’t actually need fixing, cleaned things that weren’t dirty, and completed chores twice just to stay busy. But even working from sunup to sundown hasn’t allowed my thoughts to stray from him.

Nothing helps, and nothing makes it stop.

The hardest part of my days is feeding the damn chickens.

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