“You don’t understand,” I told him.
“I think I do,” he said.
“Do you?”
How could he possibly know what I think?
“Yes. You don’t know how to feel about me. You’ve spent fifteen years loathing me, because I made your life miserable. You don’t want to turn your back on fifteen years of anger for a fake relationship that could still end badly.”
Guilty.
“That and lines blur. We just became friends. I don’t really want to fall back into what we were before.”
“I get that, Emma. I do, and I regret many things I’ve done in the past. Blaming you for Shiloh was not fair. I lost my best friend over that. Now I have you back, and I won’t screw that up. When this is all over, if you haven’t fallen head over heels in love with me for real, we can have a cordial fake break up and continue to be friends,” he said.
My breath caught. He just voiced my biggest fear like it was no big deal.
“Emma, please?” he asked.
He used that same tone he did as a kid when he wanted to convince me to do something that would get us in trouble. I was tumbling over the edge of old and new, lost between his wants and my need to protect myself.
“I won’t hurt you again,” he promised.
I wasn’t sure how he could promise something like that, when it was ingrained in him to hurt me.
I was silent for a minute, weighing the pros and cons.
My heart told me what I was going to do while my head screamed out in defiance.
“You better be the best fake boyfriend that I will ever have,” I told him.
“For real, you will do it?” he asked.
“Don’t make me regret it, Riley.”
“I won’t, I promise,” he said.
“So, do you want to go out tonight, make it official?” he said.
If I was going to do this, I was going all in. I didn’t half ass anything. That was not my style.
“Let’s wait a day or two. Give the rumor mill time to gossip. That way, when we do go out, everyone will be talking about it. If we go out too soon, it may look too fast for people who spent fifteen years at odds with each other.”
He was silent as he thought my words over. He did this cute little wiggle with his mouth when he was deep in thought.
“You are right. Have you done this fake dating thing before?” he asked while flashing me with a bright smile.
I felt butterflies at the attention.
Why? It’s just Riley.
“Yeah, right, just the sad attempts at real dating.”
“Hey, don’t worry about the ones who missed out. You have something good now.” He winked at me.
The ones who missed out because you were a jerk.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said with a smile.
