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A husky laugh leaves her and she rolls into me, tucking her face against my chest. My arm slides around her, hugging her closer. We both fell asleep naked. As much as I always want to have her, this is nice, just laying together like this. It makes me feel closer to her without anything between us.
She peeks up at me and my heart climbs into my throat. I want to make her my girlfriend for real.
“Do you want to head back right away or hang out here for a bit?”
A rumble vibrates in my chest as I roll her beneath me. “You know my answer to that.” My hips settle between her thighs and I grind against her. “I always want to be right here.”
Tatum winds her arms around my neck, arching her back. “Mm. I meant do you want to get breakfast?” She hesitates in the same way she does when she’s working out a problem. Her mouth opens and closes, then she seems to reconsider. “I was thinking if you want, we could use the clips we filmed from the concert and record a morning after vlog for some new couple content on your TikTok.”
My shoulders tense. Couple content—what she calls the couple-focused thirst trap content I’ve mainly switched to since we started pretending we were together. Instead of filming clips of myself stripping out of my wet suit after a surf or playing basketball with the guys, I only posted things with her in them. I haven’t thought about our viral tactics since I uploaded the clip of the kiss cam one of the guys on the basketball team forwarded to me.
When I don’t respond, she gets up to pull on a loose tank top and one of her stretchy tennis skirts that drive me crazy. I watch for a few moments before getting dressed.
I want her more than anything. But I need her to see me as more than her fake boyfriend and her stand in to get experience points with. My fists ball. I know she’s nothing like the girls who only want me for a ride on my dick. When I opened up to her about it after running into Kayla at the party, she was worried about doing the same thing to me as the girls I thought I had something real with.
Tatum’s the only real experience I’ve ever had. It’s time I stop coasting on the plan I put together and tell her the truth. No more fears. No more stalling.
We can’t keep this up. She still thinks of this as fake. I have to end this game and tell her how I feel. Licking my lips, I catch her by the shoulders. She smiles, dropping her hair from the ponytail she was scraping it into.
“Hi.”
My lips twitch and nerves twist my gut. “Hey. Sit down a minute? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Her smile freezes. “Oh. Yeah.” She slips out of my grasp and drops to the end of the bed. “What’s up?”
It hits me hard how much I love her. Everything about her steals my breath. Her luminous blue eyes. The freckles across her nose. That slightly crooked tooth from falling off Jackson’s bike. Her big heart and her clever mind. She’s dedicated and kind. Perfect in every way. Perfect for me.
Tatum’s guidance from our study sessions filters through my head. The way she breaks things down into steps for me. I can’t skip ahead. This has to go in order to make sense, to know what comes next.
“I’m tired of pretending with you, Tate.”
THIRTY-NINE
TATUM
No more pretending.
Oh.Oh. It’s logical that at some point faking a relationship with Cooper would have to end. We’re halfway through the semester. Of course he’d want to stop.
This was always fake for him. He doesn’t see a girl like me.
Everything I’ve tucked away in my heart rises to the surface. All those times I forgot the rules. I was never supposed to fall for this, too.
I knew it wasn’t forever, so why does it feel like an undertow has me trapped, unable to breathe?
No more training wheels boyfriend, even if the thought of losing Cooper makes my heart fracture. My fingers twitch with the need to move thanks to my anxiety bubbling up, filling my chest until it’s tight and uncomfortable. I shove my hands beneath my thighs, scrunching the sheets in my grip.
The resolution I made last night sits in the back of my throat. This isn’t how I pictured this morning going. Waking up in his arms, smiling before I opened my eyes, I was ready to tell him how I feel about him until I lost my nerve. I only brought up breakfast to give myself time to work back up to telling him. The words won’t come now, my newfound confidence taking a critical hit.
This is where having no plan gets me—blindsided with no idea what to do next.
I always thought it didn’t feel like we were faking. I guess it hasn’t been the same for him. I’d ask him to double check, but the thought of hearing him spell it out for me forms a leaden weight of dread in the pit of my stomach.
He’s tired of pretending with me. My stomach clenches as his rasped words echo in my head. What more do I need to know than that? I won’t make this more awkward by adding feelings into the mix. We both knew the rules we agreed to when we started this. I wasn’t supposed to fall for him.
Swallowing past the emotions welling in my throat to form a lump, I think of what he told me at the party. The last thing I want is to be another girl using him. He doesn’t deserve the way girls treat him like a perfectly sculpted trophy instead of a giving man with the biggest heart. Someone as caring and genuine as him deserves to find someone that supports and loves him, because he’s more amazing than any guy I’ve ever met.
Cooper’s eyes bounce between mine. There’s something wary in his expression. Is he worried about me? This was his idea in the first place. It’s his call when we stop this.
