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Shanna looked over at me. All the anger was gone; she was just completely bewildered at this point.
Derek looked back at me for the first time since he’d started. Funnily enough, he was totally nonchalant – not like a regular dude who had just bared his heart and soul in front of a girl on their second date.
“You don’t care, right?” he asked me. “I mean, we’re not going to do anything, so – the more, the merrier, right?”
Despite all my previous promises to myself that nothing would happen, now that I had absolute assurance that nothing would happen… I was kind of pissed.
Plus, I saw the irony in it. I had cock-blocked Shanna… and now Shanna was going to be cock-blocking me. At Derek’s invitation, no less.
Karma’s a bitch.
“…I guess,” I muttered.
“Cool.” He grinned at me, then turned back to Shanna. “So, you comin’?”
All of Shanna’s usual confidence was gone, completely blasted to bits by Derek’s full-on niceness assault.
“…yeah… okay…”
Derek held up a finger. “But if you come, you’ve got to promise me one thing.”
She narrowed her eyes distrustfully. “What?”
“You’ve gotta forgive Kaitlyn, because she had nothing to do with it. She’s totally not in love with me, but I’m in love with her, and you can’t control that, right?”
Jesus, there he went again.
And there went my heart, slamming against the inside of my ribs.
“…I guess…” she agreed reluctantly.
“So are you going to forgive her?”
Memories of our feud came rushing back, and she gave me a mini-glare. “Yes.”
“No, I mean it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
“Tell her.”
Shanna stared at him like Are you for real? Then she turned to me and said with overblown theatricality, “I forgive you.”
My face felt scorching hot. GOD this was humiliating.
“You don’t have to forgive me for anything – I’m the one who was a bitch. I’m sorry.”
Derek turned and pointed at me like, HEY, no speaking out of turn. “Don’t be sorry – it was all me. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” Then he turned back to Shanna. “Okay, cool, go get your stuff.”
Shanna turned around, then hesitated. “Can I change first?”
“Just make it quick.” He tapped his watch-less wrist. “We’re running late.”
“Okay, okay, just give me a couple of minutes,” she huffed, and shut the door.
When he turned back to me, he was completely calm and blasé. I, meanwhile, had my arms wrapped around me tightly again. I couldn’t have verbalized it at the time, but it was probably to protect myself against the psychological onslaught of what he’d said.
About… being in love with me.
“Hope you don’t mind I invited her like that – I just don’t want to see you two fi– ”
“Why’d you say that?” I interrupted.
He frowned slightly. “What, about inviting her?”
“No. About… being…”
“In love with you?”
“…yes.”
“Because it’s true.” He said it like ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘what goes up must go down’ – like it was a purely factual statement. More than that, he said it in a totally, completely unashamed and unreserved way. He wasn’t embarrassed at all. “I’m totally in love with you. Don’t say anything back, because I know you don’t feel that way. But I do.”
My heart was going a million miles an hour, and I felt like I might swoon.
“If this is some kind of a trick – ” I started.
He smiled. “It’s not.”
I paused and just drank in those emerald green eyes.
“You don’t even know me,” I finally protested – albeit feebly.
“That’s what these dates are for, right? So I can get to know you, and you can get to know me.”
“You can’t love somebody if you don’t know them.”
“Wrong. Well, maybe you can’t LOVE somebody if you don’t know them, but you can definitely fall in love. You know how I know?”
“…how?” I asked in a tiny mouse voice.
He stared and me and said confidently but quietly, “Because I’ve already fallen in love with you.”
Ohhhhhh sweet baby Jesus.
Maybe he really was a gentleman, because he didn’t make a move to kiss me, or touch me, or anything. And I’m pretty sure at that moment he could have whisked me into my dorm room and had his way with me.
