Chapter 23
tino
I should have been used to the idea of us sharing a bed by that night, after we’d already done it last night, but when I walked into the room and found Lilah sitting at the foot of the bed in just her pajamas, her hair still damp from her shower, my brain short-circuited for a moment.
I guess it became apparent pretty quickly that I was staring because she narrowed her eyes at me. “Problem?”
I certainly couldn’t tell her that the sight of her sitting on my bed—our bed—like that was making me want to kiss her more than I’d ever wanted to before, so I said the first thing I could think of.
“Are those strawberries?” I asked dumbly. She was in a light pink pajama set that was covered in cartoon strawberries with smiley faces all over them.
She narrowed her eyes. “You have a problem with my strawberry friends?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I just wasn’t prepared to be stared at all night by your clothes.”
Lilah threw one of the decorative pillows at me. I caught it one-handed and tossed it onto the chair. “You’re just jealous you don’t have fun pajamas.”
“I have great pajamas,” I said defensively.
She looked pointedly at my Hartwell Hockey T-shirt (I had to improvise since I usually slept shirtless) and flannel pants. “Sure. If by great you mean regular and boring.”
“They’re minimalist.”
“They’re sad.”
“Functional.”
She grinned. “Grandpa.”
I just grinned and plugged my phone in while she crawled into bed first, immediately pulling the comforter up to her chin like a burrito. I climbed in beside her, careful to keep a respectable distance like last night—not that it had done us any good.
She tugged the blanket around her shoulders until only her eyes peeked out. “Okay, ground rules.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Again?”
“Rule number one: no blanket stealing.”
“You’re the one who stole the blankets last night.”
“I did not! Now rule number two: stay on your side.”
“Do I need to remind you that you were the one who ended up on top of me last night?”
She sniffed. “So you say.”
“You woke up like that!”
“And how do I know you didn’t pull me on top of you to make it seem like that?”
I blinked. “Literally what would I get out of that? How would I benefit at all?”
She ignored me. “And rule number three: no staring at me while I’m asleep. That’s serial-killer behavior.”
“Only stare at you when you’re awake, got it.”
She flicked off the lamp, leaving only the faint light from the hallway under the door. “Goodnight, creep.”
“Goodnight, menace.”
For a few minutes, the only sounds were the soft hum of the heater and the rustle of sheets as she shifted. When I couldn’t see her, I could feel her more—every small shift, every brush of fabric. The faint rustle when she turned over. The way her knee bumped mine, and neither of us moved away.
Then her voice floated through the dark.
“Tino?”
“Yeah?”
“Your side is squeaking.”
“It’s protesting your rule enforcement.”
She laughed quietly, and I smiled into the pillow.
Silence settled again. It should have been easy to drift off after such a long day but sleep refused to come. I was too aware of her. The tiny sounds she made when she moved. The brush of her knee under the blanket when she adjusted. The scent of her shampoo.
After a while, she sighed. “You still awake?”
“Yep.”
“I can’t sleep either.”
“Too many strawberries on your conscience?”
She let out a soft snort. “My brain’s just… loud.”
“Want to talk about it?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. It’s not really a thing, just… everything’s been weird lately.”
“Because of the whole fake-dating circus?”
“It’s just strange, pretending all the time. Smiling when people look. Acting like we can’t keep our hands off each other. It’s just… exhausting, sometimes. But at the same time…” She trailed off.
“At the same time what?”
She hesitated. “At the same time, it’s kind of… nice.”
My chest tightened. “Nice how?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Having someone there. Not feeling like I have to explain myself. Everyone just kind of… leaves me alone because I’m ‘taken.’” She made air quotes, I could tell by the sound of her fingers brushing the blanket. “It’s peaceful, weirdly enough.”
I swallowed, choosing my words carefully. “Yeah. I get that.”
“You do?”
“Yeah,” I said. “People treat me differently because of my brothers, you know? They either want something from me or they assume I’ve got the same golden ticket. But with you… it’s easy.”
There was a long pause. Then she whispered, “Same.”
Her fingers brushed against mine under the blanket—barely there, probably an accident—but my heart reacted like it was anything but.
She didn’t pull away, though. And I didn’t move either.
“I guess we’re getting pretty good at pretending,” she murmured.
“Yeah,” I said again, though the word felt heavier this time. “We really are.”
Silence again. Then, after a beat, she yawned. Something in me ached. I wanted to reach for her, to tell her it wasn’t fake for me anymore—but I didn’t.
She turned toward me in the dark. “Do you ever think about what happens when this ends?”
Her question hit like a body check, but I managed a small laugh. “You mean after our fake breakup? When the whole campus mourns for the relationship that was doomed from the start?”
“I’m serious,” she said. “What happens to us? Do we just… go back to normal?”
I stared at the ceiling. “I guess we go back to being friends.”
“Friends who have kissed.”
“Right. Friends with a complicated history.” I turned my head, trying to make out her face in the dark. “Do you really think we can go back to normal after all this?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I mean, maybe. We were friends before, so it’s not impossible. But things might be weird for a bit.”
“Weird I can handle.”
“Good,” she murmured. “Because you’re stuck with me either way.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice lower now. “I can live with that.”
The silence that followed was comfortable this time.
Her breathing evened out gradually, soft and steady.
She shifted closer in her sleep, her hand brushing against my arm, and that was it—the final nail in my ability to relax.
I let myself look at her again. Her face was peaceful now, her lashes brushing her cheeks, her hair fanned out on the pillow between us.
I froze, then exhaled slowly, letting her fingers stay where they were.
Maybe tomorrow we’d joke about it. Maybe she’d roll her eyes and say I’d drifted onto her side again.
But right now, in this small dark room with her half-asleep beside me, I couldn’t bring myself to care about lines or sides or pretending.
Instead, I lay there thinking about how easy it was to fall for her—and how hard it was going to be to remember that she hadn’t fallen for me.