Page 99 of The Perfect Deception

“Why?”

“Be­cause I was afraid you’d leave me. I was so twisted up in­side over my dad fir­ing me, I let it bleed into my re­la­tion­ship with you. I’m so sorry.”

“You should have had faith in me. And if you had doubts, you should have told me.”

He nod­ded. “I know. I knew you weren’t re­ally with them. I ac­cused you of be­ing on their side be­cause that way I could leave you first.”

“Why?”

He nod­ded. “You’re the first per­son I’ve ever fallen in love with. I mean, re­ally fallen in love with. Dina, I love ev­ery­thing about you—your hair, your smile, the way you don’t take me too se­ri­ously, your vo­cab­u­lary and the crazy facts you know. All of it. And it ter­ri­fied me. Be­cause I was afraid when you knew the whole story about Ash­ley, you’d leave. It was okay you didn’t tell me you loved me—I had time to change that—but if you’d walked out on me, it would be the sec­ond per­son I’d loved who’d done that and I couldn’t have lived with it. So I left first.”

“You didn’t think I’d be­lieve you if you told me the truth?”

“My fa­ther didn’t.”

“Your fa­ther is an ass.”

Adam laughed. “I used to think so too. Now I’m not so sure.”

“And I’m not your mother.”

Adam froze. “What?”

Dina moved onto the couch next to him, ex­actly where he’d wanted her to sit when she’d first walked in. Only now he wished she were any­where else. His heart pounded in his chest and the bands of pres­sure squeezed so hard, spots flick­ered in front of his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about his mother.

His hand grew cool and he looked down to see Dina’s hand cov­er­ing it, her thumb stroking across his knuck­les.

“I’m not your mother. And her leav­ing had noth­ing to do with you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t. Only your fa­ther does, and he could prob­a­bly give you the an­swers you’re look­ing for. But I do know that chil­dren are never the cause of their par­ents’ prob­lems. What­ever her rea­sons for leav­ing, it was not a lack of love for you.”

Adam gripped Dina’s hand. “I have this ir­ra­tional fear that if I let go, you’ll dis­ap­pear, like when Darth Vader killed Obi Wan.”Oh God, tell me I didn’t just say that.What was it about her that made all his de­fenses shut down? She’d think he was a cow­ard, a geek cow­ard, which might be even worse. He let his head fall for­ward, not want­ing to see the laugh­ter in her gaze, laugh­ter that would be di­rected at him.

“Hey,” she said, her voice low and thought­ful.

When he raised his head, her mouth was se­ri­ous, her gaze somber. She cupped his cheek with her free hand. Her skin was soft, smooth and cool, pro­vid­ing an­other touch point he didn’t want to lose, and he cov­ered it with his other hand. “You can hold on for as long as you’d like. I’m not go­ing any­where, even when you let go. And I’m not go­ing to turn into any Force ghost.”

The bands of pres­sure in his chest loos­ened and calm set­tled over him for the first time in as long as he could re­mem­ber. He let go of the hand on his cheek and pulled her close, in­hal­ing the co­conut scent of her hair as he tried to keep his breath­ing steady.

“I love you,” she whis­pered against his ear.

He pulled away. “You don’t have to say it. I don’t de­serve it.”

She stroked the side of his face. “I’ve wanted to say it for weeks, but I was scared. And then when you said it to me at the re­union, I didn’t just want to prat­tle it back to you like some talk­ing par­rot. My feel­ings mean too much for me to do that.”

“Why?” When she frowned, he hur­ried to con­tinue. “No, not why do your feel­ings mean some­thing. Why would you pos­si­bly love me af­ter the way I treated you?”

“Be­cause I can see through you. I see who you are in­side.” She touched his chest and he wished for her skin to touch his. “I don’t care about the rest of this—your money, your looks, your job, al­though I’m glad you have one be­cause it makes you happy and ev­ery­one needs to make a liv­ing. But that’s not why I love you. I’d love you if you were a jan­i­tor on a bi­cy­cle.”

The im­age made Adam laugh and he hugged her to him, kiss­ing the part in her hair. Af­ter a mo­ment, he grew se­ri­ous again. “But af­ter the way I’ve treated you?”

She pulled away and he tamped down the au­to­matic fis­sure of fear. She was still here. She said she wouldn’t leave. He had to be­lieve her.

“I hate the way you treated me. You for­got who I am and what about me makes you love me, and while you’re very good at apol­o­giz­ing, that can’t hap­pen again. I can’t be with some­one who doesn’t trust me, and I won’t be with some­one who thinks so lit­tle of me they’ll drop me any­time some­thing gets hard.”

“How do I fix this? Be­cause you mean more to me than any­one and I don’t ever want to let you go.”