Page 62 of Based on You

He looked at me, his head tilting slightly in confusion. "Are we just hooking up?"

"I don't know. You never officially asked."

He was quiet a second, processing. "What do you think we are?"

"I think," I started, careful, "that you've never asked me anything formal."

"Asking you something formal in the back of a car is not how I want to do it." His mouth pulled up at one corner in a devastating smirk. "If I were going to ask you anything formal, it would be to marry me."

I barked a laugh. It escaped before I could catch it, and I quickly covered my mouth, caught off guard by how genuine it was.

He was staring at me. His jaw had shifted, the teasing smile gone, something far more intense underneath it. My laughter finished and didn't come back.

He'd said it lightly, and I knew it wasn't a real proposal, and I wasn't treating it as one. But the word had come out of his mouth, in that tone, in the back of this car, about me, and it sat somewhere deep in my ribs and pressed.

I'd understood the doomed shape of this secret for weeks, the collision point I couldn't avoid. But sitting here, with his hand gripping my waist and that word still hanging in the air between us, it landed differently. Not as something coming. As something already here.

He wasn't casual about me. He hadn't been for a while. And I carried a secret that was going to change what I was to him the moment it came out. The longer I stayed in this house, soaking in this warmth, the worse the landing was going to be.

I let out a shaky breath and sank back against the seat.

Manuel pulled the car out of the dark garage.

We got home in the early evening. Olivia was tucked away in her room. The house was dark, Marta already gone for the day, and nobody had bothered turning on more lights than they needed. Marta had left our dinner warming on the kitchen counter.

Simon said he was going to take a quick shower before he ate. He looked at me from across the marble counter, his gray eyes holding mine a beat too long before he turned and headed upstairs.

I mumbled that I was going to make a quick phone call.

I walked out to the chilly balcony, slid the glass door shut behind me, sat down on the cold step, and dialed Sloane.

She picked up on the first ring. "Hey. I literally just got back. I'm at the apartment now."

"How is she doing?"

"Better. Much better. The doctor finally said she can go home soon." I heard the muffled sound of her dropping onto her couch. "She was asking about you today. I told her you were totally fine."

"Sloane," I choked out.

A sharp pause. "Vi. What happened. You don't sound good at all."

I opened my mouth to answer, and my eyes filled with hot tears, the pressure of the entire week finding the first crack and flooding through it.

"Vi." Her tone dropped, fierce. "Hey. What is it? Tell me."

"It's been such a good week," I sobbed quietly. "I keep laughing and I keep being so happy, and I don't know what to do with it because I know for a fact it's not going to last." My voice broke right in the middle of it. "He said things, Sloane. About love. And tonight in the car he talked about marriage, like it was a joke, but he said it out loud. And I knew exactly what all of it meant, and I couldn't say a single thing back, and I just don't know how to get out of this alive."

"Oh, Vi." She exhaled a long, heavy breath. "Okay. I'm going to be honest with you right now."

"I know."

"You have to tell him. I know you know that, and I know you keep saying you'll figure it out eventually, but you have to do it now. Because this has turned into something else. You just told me yourself. His feelings are real, and they're getting bigger, and he doesn't know who you actually are." She paused, letting it sink in.

"If he finds out from someone else, or if the book drops and someone smart puts it together first, he is not going to forgive you. And Vi, you'll have deserved it."

I pressed my shaking hand over my wet eyes.

"I can't," I sobbed. "I know I need to. But right now… now that it's real, now that he's so different… I can't go back to that kitchen conversation and say, 'By the way, I've been her the whole time.' I can't do that to him. I can't do it to Olivia."