CHAPTER 21
Not a dream, I realized. A nightmare, one I couldn’t wake up from.
Jamie standing in my driveway made no sense for several reasons. His car was not anywhere in sight. Book club would’ve only just finished. He would’ve texted me if he was going to stop by the house.
But despite all that, here he was.
Jamie’s hair hung a little in his eyes as he ducked to peer under the roof of the car, glasses sliding down his nose.
His expression was impossible to read, lips pressed into a line as our gazes locked.
He had to see the horror in my eyes, written so plainly on my face, but he still said nothing.
I knew what it looked like, what he must’ve been thinking, and panic licked through me.
Still, I forced myself to be calm, because this was Jamie.
I could explain, and he’d hear me out. No matter how bad it looked, it was fixable.
“Jamie,” I began, trying to push out of the car, but Dalton’s fingers gripped mine tighter, making it look as terrible as possible.
I wrenched my hand out of his, heart hammering faster. “What—what are you doing here?”
He took a step back so I could get out of the car. “I skipped book club,” he said in a flat tone. Too flat. “I wanted to surprise you.”
He skipped book club. Blasphemous for Jamie. Since he’d started going, Jamie hadn’t missed a single Wednesday. I reached for Jamie’s hand, winding my fingers around his cold ones. They didn’t return the grip. “He was just—dropping me off,” I told him, trying to speak with my eyes.
“He had to hold your hand to do it?”
“That—that wasn’t—”
“What it looks like?” Jamie finished, a small crease beginning to form between his brows. “Funny how that keeps happening.”
Panic began to creep in at the coldness in Jamie’s voice, because I’d never heard him talk like that before. Even when we’d argued about college the other day, he’d been angry, but not cold. Icy. Hurt.
I heard Dalton’s car door open, but Jamie didn’t look over at him. “Theo’s sick?” Jamie murmured, the words barely lilting as a question. “Because he didn’t look like it inside.”
The lie I’d told the twins so I could prep for my grand confession. This was going from bad to worse. “Y-You were inside?”
“I’ve been here for over an hour, Daisy.”
My stomach dropped. Over an hour. A part of me was afraid of what the kids told him—that their sister blew up at them earlier?—and the other part was afraid of what it meant, that he’d been waiting for me, only to find me sitting with the one boy I’d sworn I was over.
Yeah, definitely from bad to worse.
“Have you been hanging out with him?” For the first time, something hard dripped from Jamie’s tone. “And you didn’t want Nell or me to find out, so you lied?”
“No.” I gripped his hand tighter, but he barely reacted. “That’s not it. It was—just this once—”
“You guys are playing this off really well,” Dalton said from behind me, his voice amused. “Almost like a real couple.”
The words did exactly what Dalton wanted them to—they ruined everything. Jamie’s eyes, finally, slowly, lifted from me to Dalton on the other side of the car, and I watched as a shadow passed over his gaze.
Things went from worse to unfixable.
Jamie looked back to me. “You told him.” The words were filled with something final. Not a question.
“No! No, I didn’t!”
Jamie’s response, though, was all the confirmation Dalton needed. “I’ll admit, you did put on quite the performance. Jamie, does Columbia have a theatre program? Or only NYU?”
“Shut up.” I whirled around to glare at Dalton, finding him with his arms folded over the roof of the car. His expression was smug. “We—we weren’t faking it. It was real—”
“I told you, Daisy. You don’t have to use him to get my attention.” Dalton tilted his head a little. “You’ve always had it.”
Jamie’s hand shifted in my grip, like he was about to pull away. “Would you just get lost?” I demanded, voice cracking through the air.
Dalton’s grin only widened, but he straightened. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said, sliding back into the driver’s seat before I could tell him he was still blocked.
Jamie stared wordlessly as Dalton reversed down the driveway, his expression still flat.
Unreadable. Scary. A pit formed in my stomach as I tried to guess where his head was at.
If I could only know what he was thinking, I could fix it.
As Dalton’s taillights disappeared down the street, I swallowed hard.
“Let me start from the beginning, okay? I—I got into an argument with Mom, and the kids, and I just—I needed space.”
“And you called him.” Jamie looked down at our hands, as if wondering why I hadn’t yet let go. “Not me.”
“You were going to book club, and I—”
“You think I wouldn’t ditch book club for you? You think I wouldn’t throw everything away for you?” He inhaled sharply and let the breath out slowly. “You didn’t want me. You wanted him.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to reorient myself in the narrative Jamie was building. It was half right, but so wrong. “I didn’t want him,” I insisted. “I—I wanted to ask him how I’d handled things last year. I wanted to ask him why this year is so much harder.”
“I was here last year, too, Daisy.”
But I needed to understand my feelings, I thought, pinching my lips shut. I needed to find out that I was truly over him.
Jamie pulled his hand out of mine to nudge his glasses up his nose, looking sharply away. “The fake relationship. It was never about getting him to leave you alone, was it?” he demanded. “This was just to make him jealous. To make him want you more.”
“It—it wasn’t, not really—”
“But you knew it would do that. You knew it would make him want you more. That he’d want you even more because it was me.”
I couldn’t deny it, because I had known that. And I’d kept it to myself.
Jamie let out a slow breath, reaching two fingers up underneath the lens of his glasses and rubbing into his eye. “I can’t even be mad,” he muttered, a corner of his lips tugged up, but it wasn’t a smile. “I let you use me, Daze. And I’d do it all over again.”
It felt like he’d reached in and yanked something from my chest, something important.
You have me wrapped around your finger, he’d said. The things I do for you, Daisy Carmichael.
Dalton’s words from the car ride home echoed in my mind. He’d never say no to you. Because he’d do anything for you… doesn’t mean he loves you.
“Why didn’t you kiss me?” The question was quiet, nearly stolen away by the breeze. Maybe it should’ve been. Maybe it was the wrong time to ask it, but after tonight, I wasn’t sure there’d ever be a good time to ask him. “The night at Lydia’s party. Why—why didn’t you kiss me?”
My heart skipped so many beats in my chest it was a wonder I remained upright, holding perfectly still while Jamie stared me down.
There was no line between his brows anymore, no confusion or anger.
Instead, his expression was flat, hollow, as if the question meant absolutely nothing to him.
“Because I want my first kiss to be real,” he said at last, no mercy in his tone. “And with you, it wouldn’t have been.”
My lips parted in a silent gasp. “It wouldn’t have?”
Jamie looked away. “It would’ve been fake,” he said, the words so low they nearly trembled. “The same way these past few weeks have been.”
Fake. To hear the word on his lips was like a blow, the same way it’d been last summer when Dalton stood on my porch with our relationship in a box. Except Jamie’s hands were empty and this wasn’t a breakup. This was my own delusion shattering at my feet.
Just because he kept all my drawings didn’t mean he had feelings for me.
Just because he kept a piece of paper in his pocket didn’t mean he loved me.
And just because he agreed to fake date me didn’t mean he wanted to date me for real.
It’s easy to confuse love and friendship. My throat tightened. It truly had been all in my head. And if I told him about my feelings now, what would he say? Would it ruin things between us?
Or, worse, would he go along with it the same way he’d gone along with every other request of mine? You didn’t give him a choice, Raelynn had said. But you never do, do you?
I was suddenly grateful Junie had knocked over the water earlier.
If I’d given my drawing to Jamie when he had zero feelings for me, what would’ve happened?
Would he even know how to say no to me? The thought made something inside me cave in.
I didn’t want a relationship Jamie agreed to out of guilt.
Or obligation. Or because he cared about me too much to hurt me properly.
“Right.” I barely got the word out. “It was all fake.”
Jamie rocked on his heels a little, jaw working as he still didn’t look at me.
A sick, sinking dread spread through my chest. The only time we’d ever come close to being this serious was when we’d argued about college, but even that felt survivable.
This didn’t. This felt like standing there and realizing something between us had already broken beyond repair.
And it was all my fault.
Jamie still didn’t look at me. “I want to be done.”
“Done?”
“With this. Us.” His chest hitched. “The fake relationship. I don’t want to do it anymore. And I’m sure you don’t either, if you’re sneaking out to be with Dalton behind our backs.”
The denial sat at the tip of my tongue, that wasn’t what was happening, but I didn’t say it. It didn’t matter, and for the first time in his life, Jamie was telling me no. My throat closed. “Okay.”
“I’ll ask Nell how she thinks we should break up, so it doesn’t look bad on either of us.
” His head turned back toward me, but he flinched away again, as if he couldn’t bear to look me in the eye.
“But unless you want everyone thinking you’re a cheater, you should probably stay away from Dalton until we break up.
Or fake break up. Or… whatever. And hopefully he keeps his mouth shut. ”
I wrapped my arms around myself, but it didn’t do anything to keep me together.