Page 79 of Dream On, Liar

Not the version I’d kept hoping would finally look at me and see enough.

Just…him.

And it hit me, clean and brutal, that I had spent my entire life trying to become someone he would choose without hesitation.

Someone who would finally make him proud enough to stay soft.

To stay kind.

To stay mine in the way I had always needed him to be.

But standing there, watching him defend someone else over me without even realising what it was doing to me—

I understood something I had been avoiding for years.

The man I kept hoping for only existed in the version of him I had built to survive loving him.

And the real one—

The real one had always been here.

My throat tightened.

I swallowed it down.

My father’s phone rang.

He glanced at it, already half-detached, and stepped away to answer.

Just like that. Like the moment hadn’t split something open in me. When he came back, his expression had reset. Controlled again. Professional again. “I have to go back out there.” He looked at me briefly. “I’m not taking his side, Trouble. But I need you to think about it. Okay? Be a good girl and sort this out before you leave this room.”

Then he left, and the hurt I’d felt was now laced in with humiliation.

The door shut behind him with a soft, final click.

And the silence that followed felt different now as I stared at the shut door.

“So,” Rihaan started, “are you going to be a good girl, trouble?”

My glare came fast as my head snapped to his.

It had been sharp enough to cut, but it only made his smirk deepen.

“All you have to do is apologise,” he said smugly, “and we can call it a truce.”

“Dream On, Liar.”

He stiffened, his brow furrowing like he was searching the meaning behind words when something like realisation finally drew on him.

“Is that what all of this has been about? You’re mad that I lied about who I was a few years ago?” The bewilderment on his face would’ve been amusing, had the past twenty minutes been a dream.

“You knew I didn’t date Cricketers—”

“No. I didn’t.”

I frowned. “I told you—”

“I may have not remembered the night the first time, but I remember this very clearly. You asked if I worked in sports, and I said no. There had been no rules. You simply took that response and ran with it. Sure, I’d…”