He’d made the phone calls. Not Kyle or his publicist or anyone else. Noah had done it himself. That had to mean something.

That blue butterfly-wing hope returned. “Speaking of Shelby, there’s some things she helped me realize. That my dad maybe gave me more issues than I’d realized. I thought my kissing phobia was my biggest fear, but it turns out it was losing you. And I did want to tell you. You know how I get when I’m afraid. So I didn’t say anything. Because avoidance has been my coping mechanism for so long that I—”

He cut me off. “No, you do not get to use my weakness for you against me.”

“Weakness for me?” I repeated, surprised.

“You’re my kryptonite. So is how much I care about what you’ve gone through, how important it was to me to help you, how much I love you. You can’t play on that now.”

I was surprised by the vehemence in his voice. Was his anger a good thing? What about the fact that he’d used love in the present tense, not a past one? “I wasn’t trying to do that, I promise. I’m just trying to explain why I did what I did. I think I at least owe you that.”

He nodded but again was silent.

I sucked in a big breath. “I never pretended when I was with you. I was always me.”

“You pretended from the beginning. You lied to me and then you kept lying to manipulate me.”

Now I was feeling a little frustrated. “I was not trying to manipulate you. I lied so much to myself that it was too easy to lie to you, too. I didn’t know how things were going to turn out between us. I didn’t know I was going to fall in love with you!”

His expression shifted and I couldn’t read it fast enough, but he was back to anger. “Now you can say it? Now that I know the truth about everything?”

“Yes! That’s why I couldn’t tell you before.”

“Because of a guilty conscience?” he correctly guessed. “You knew what you were doing was wrong, but you did it anyway.”

“I did. And it was selfish of me and it was due to my issues and had nothing to do with your job. I never saw you as Malec. Except for that one time you dressed like him. But even then, you were still Noah to me. I see you and I know you and I love you.”

He let out a sigh of what sounded like a mixture of disgust and regret, and I wished I knew the right thing to say to him so that he would let me back in.