Page 131 of Faking the Goal

The reminder hits exactly where it should.

"Just let me be your fake boyfriend anyway." I hold her gaze. "And I don't hate you."

I like you.

The words sit right there.

I could say them.

After days of driving myself fucking insane trying to understand what Taylor is to me, I finally know. I could tell her right now that I was wrong about more than what I said at the club. That somewhere during the last month, all the irritation and arguments and time we spent together turned into something I didn't recognize until I nearly destroyed it.

But I don't.

I don't have the right to unload my feelings onto her when she still hasn't forgiven me. Not when I'm trying to earn back the trust I damaged, and definitely not when she has a much bigger problem sitting on her coffee table in the form of black flowers, unwanted Christmas presents, and a fucking invitation to a date she never agreed to.

Whatever I want from Taylor can wait.

This can't.

When she told me about her stalker earlier, the whole fucking thing made my blood run cold. Knowing some creep has been following her, watching her, sending her shit and taunting her while she has no idea who he is or where he might be makes anger burn through me every time I think about it.

But underneath the anger is something else.

Worry.

A fucking unbearable amount of it.

And whatever protective instinct I already had toward Taylor suddenly feels magnified tenfold.

By the time she'd finished, my mind had already started painting pictures I never wanted to see—some creep standing across the street from her apartment in the middle of the night, watching her through the windows while she went about her evening completely unaware he was there. Watching her leave for class. Watching her come home from work. Learning her routines. Waiting.

The thought alone makes my jaw clench hard enough to hurt.

Whoever this guy is, I want him nowhere near her.

I want to tear this fucking city apart until I find him. Search every street, every parking garage, every apartment building, every dark corner where a coward like this could hide. I want a face. A name. I want to know exactly who the fuck he is, because the idea of Taylor being scared to walk home, scared inside her own apartment, scared because some asshole has decided he's entitled to her makes something vicious twist inside me.

And I don't trust myself to think too hard about what I'd do if I ever got my hands on him.

"Really?" She folds her arms. "So you're telling me it's just my imagination that every single time you see me, your face immediately looks like you bit into a lemon?"

"I—" I stop, frowning. "I do that?"

She gives me a long, pointed look.

"Yes, you do that. Constantly. Since the first time we met." Her voice goes completely deadpan. "Your eyebrows immediately scrunch together, your jaw gets all tight, your face goes sour, and you look at me like my mere existence is personally inconveniencing you. Every. Single. Time. It's like I committed some horrible crime against you and nobody bothered telling me what it was."

Fuck.

Hearing her describe it like that makes me feel even worse about how I've treated her. All those times I scowled the second she walked into a room, I genuinely thought she was getting on my nerves. Her clothes irritated me. Her flirting irritated me. Her loud mouth, her recklessness, the way she could command every fucking ounce of my attention without even trying—all of it irritated me.

Except apparently, a lot of the time, I wasn't irritated with her at all.

I was irritated with myself for being attracted to her when she was the complete opposite of everything I thought I wanted.

And while I've spent all this time fighting something I wasn't even willing to admit existed, Taylor has been on the receiving end of every scowl, every clenched jaw, every sour fucking look that came with it.

No wonder she thought I hated her.