Page 47 of One Lovely Lie

“Yeah. Woah, man. Fuck you,” I mumble when he starts laughing.

Traitor.

“No, fuck you, man,” he throws back with a snarl. “Why are you doing this?”

“Telling you?” I scoff. “I honestly have no fucking clue.”

Carter sits up straight, looking so intensely serious. He even looks a bit angry. “Do you know he’s in love with you?”

“Yeah,” I say, a smile coming to my lips at the memory. “He told me.”

“And you know how long he’s been in love with you?”

“Yeah, that too.”

“Do you know how miserable he was all that time?”

I pout and my stomach drops. “Wait, what?”

Carter rolls his eyes as if I’m a dumbass. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “Magnus. Daniel has been in love with you practically his entire life. Can you imagine how much it must have hurt him to see you fuckliterallyanybody? You’d cuddle with him, you’d kiss his cheek, you’d fucking press your nose against his, but he couldn’t have you? It was torture.”

“I didn’t know…” I whisper, feeling suddenly like a total jackass.

“And he didn’t want you to. I have a real question for you, but you have to promise you won’t get mad.”

“Shoot.”

“Why are you playing with him?”

I bolt off the bed, fists clenched at my side. “I’m not fucking playing with him!”

“Okay, settle down.” He holds his hands up in surrender. “It’s an honest question. When you first started this, were you serious about him?”

“No,” I admit. “It was just an arrangement. No strings kind of thing.”

“And suddenly you want strings?”

“I love him, Carter,” I say, holding my hand over my heart because it hurts that fucking much to love him like that. “I’m in love with him.”

Carter looks skeptical. “As much as he loves you?”

I really fucking hope so because this feeling can’t possibly be one-sided. Daniel has to feel these butterflies when we’re together. He has to have this complete sense of rightness when we make love. There’s no way in hell he doesn’t feel this way.

“Yes,” I say.

“Alright. I’ll believe it when I see it,” he says with a dismissive shrug, but I don’t let him get back to his textbook. I snatch it away from him just as he’s reaching for it and toss it on the ground.

“First Thaxton and now you? Am I really so terrible?”

“Patterns of behavior, Magnus,” he says, all scientific and shit. “If it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it’s a fucking duck. I’m not saying you can’t be in love with him, but you need to be careful. What happened to never wanting love? What happened to hating commitment? You’re going to stand there and tell me it went away? Just like that?”

Sometimes I hate how smart Carter is because he has a point. I’ve been burying this shit because underneath all those soft and gooey emotions is pure fucking fear. I’m terrified. Terrified that I’m going to fuck it up. Terrified that I’m not good enough. Terrified that I’ll hurt him.

But I want to try. I need him. I need him to breathe. I need him to survive. I’ll always need him, forever and ever. I think I must have always been in love with him, I just never knew it.

Carter takes my silence at face value and nods. “Just…don’t fuck this up, okay?”

I know I won’t. There’s nothing left to say, but when I turn to go back to bed and maybe take a nap, Carter scratches the side of his neck, and that’s when I see it.

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