“I’m sorry,” I said, the words spilling out of me. “I never got to apologize to you and I want to do that now. I’m sorry that I hurt you. That was the last thing I would ever want to do.”

“But you did it anyway. I told you how important the truth is to me.”

“I know,” I said, grasping on to Magnus’s fur to help me feel grounded. “I should have said something earlier. But this wasn’t a scheme. I wasn’t trying to trick you. Just deflate your ego a little bit. Then we started hanging out and you hired Shelby and she really needed this job. I told myself that I was protecting her.”

His eyes still seemed flat. “I know you’d do anything for her.”

“Yes. But once I got to really know you, that didn’t work as an excuse any longer. I know the kind of man you are, and you’d never fire her because you were angry with me.” Which he’d already proven by keeping her on even though we were broken up. “And the night we met, if I’d had any clue about how gentle and good and loving you were, I never would have lied to you. I thought you were some arrogant jerk. I wish I’d known better. It was never a scheme or a ploy to get you to like me. I’m not insane.”

“I know that,” he said. “Now that I’ve calmed down, I know.”

Then why aren’t you kissing me? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t.

He continued, “But that doesn’t make what you did any less of a lie. You pretended the entire time we were together that you’d never heard of me before that night.”

“That’s true. I did. And I shouldn’t have. I’ll spend the rest of my life apologizing to you if that’s what it takes. You were so good about respecting my boundaries, and I failed to respect yours.”

He nodded, and hope surged inside me again, wondering if I was getting through to him. But all he said was, “I appreciate that.” He paused a beat and said, “Your eyes are all red.”

“Yeah, I might have been, you know, crying a little bit earlier.” Nonstop since he’d walked out of my mom’s house, thank you very much. “I really miss you.”

He didn’t say anything. Maybe Shelby had been wrong about this. About him missing me and being miserable without me.

But no matter how he was or was not feeling about me, he’d kept his word. “You called your friends to patronize my business. Just like you said you would.”

At that, he looked down at his feet. “Shelby said you were struggling, so I made some phone calls.”