Chapter Thirty-Five #2
“Sorry,” I said finally, tapping her puny button nose.
“You’ve barely been alive, and already some neurotic, emotionally unstable doctor is trauma dumping on you.
I just...he said he was attracted to me last night.
He said a lot of things, but not the ones that matter.
” The chair rocked back and forth, slow and hypnotic.
“You can be physically drawn to someone without feeling anything for them emotionally. You’ll learn that when you’re older, but please, learn it faster than I did.
” I lifted her higher, meeting her drowsy gaze.
“Learn from my mistakes. Don’t get yourself into any sort of arranged marriage.
Don’t tell yourself that love is optional—it never is.
Every girl wants to be loved, and that’s okay. We deserve to be loved.”
The door opened behind me. A woman stepped inside, clutching her purse to her chest. “Oh—are you her doctor? Is everything okay? They told me I could come see her. I’m going to be adopting her.”
I stood quickly, transferring Noor into her arms. “Everything’s fine. I’m not her doctor, just an OB here. I like spending time with the babies during my breaks.”
“That’s sweet,” she said, cradling her soon-to-be daughter with a gentleness that made my throat tighten. “I’m going to name her Grace.”
I nodded, pushing down the sting in my chest. “That’s a beautiful name.”
And it was. Grace—what I’d spent my whole life chasing without realizing I already had none left to give myself.
MY FIRST THOUGHT WHEN I got home was that I’d walked into the wrong apartment. My second was that Khalifa had finally lost it.
There he was, in the middle of the living room, standing over what looked like an indoor picnic. A blanket was spread neatly across the floor with plates and candles flickering like fireflies. He’d even lit the fancy ones—the ones I kept for emergencies, like power outages or breakups.
When he saw me, his shoulders dropped a little. “Hey,” he said. “You’re home. You didn’t answer any of my calls.”
I swallowed, trying not to read too much into the warmth in his voice. “I’m not used to you calling me,” I said, slipping off my shoes. “Thought it was a scam.”
His smiled. “Well, things are different now.”
“Are they?” I asked because it was easier than admitting how my heart had started to misbehave again.
“Yes,” he said simply. “They are. Is everything okay?”
I stared at him, at the open concern in his eyes, and hated that it made me want to cry.
When I didn’t answer, he hesitated, then his face fell. “Oh my God.” His words tumbled over each other. “Did you not want last night to happen? Lillian, I—damn it—I am so sorry—”
“Settle down, Khalifa.” I waved a hand because apparently, deflecting was my love language. “I was obviously a very enthusiastic participant in a way that’s borderline humiliating.”
“It’s not humiliating.”
“Really?” I crossed my arms. “Then what is this? What are we doing?”
“What do you mean?”
I gestured to the picnic, to the soft lighting, to him looking like he’d stepped out of a version of my life I wasn’t ready for. “I mean, what are we doing, Khalifa? What’s happening here?”
He glanced around, like the answer was hiding somewhere among the candles. “We’re having dinner.”
I laughed, but it came out bitter. “Of course. Of course you’d act like this.”
“Act like what?” he asked, genuinely confused. “What’s wrong? Why are you mad?”
“You’re unbelievable, you know that? I’m mad at you.”
“For what?”
“For existing! For being impossible to categorize. For making me feel things I didn’t sign up for.”
He looked startled, but I was already unraveling.
“I hate you.”
His head jerked slightly. “What?”
“I do. I hate you. I hate everything about you.” The words were gushing out before I could stop them, too soft to sound convincing, too raw to take back.
“I hate that you only ever send emails as communication. It’s the twenty-first century, Grandpa—get with the times!
What if there was an emergency? You’re really going to sit down and craft a draft in MLA format while I go into organ failure?
” My voice rose with each word, equal parts fury and sentiment.
“I hate that you went your entire life not knowing you were color-blind. How do you even survive day-to-day?”
His lips curved, and it pissed me off even more.
“I hate that you’re shorter than me,” I continued. “And I hate that you don’t care that you’re shorter than me, like a normal, insecure man. No, you just own it. You’re confident about it. You know you look good at any height. It’s annoying.”
He didn’t interrupt. Just stood there, watching me like I was both a car crash and a sunrise.
“I hate the way you say my name. Lillian, Lillian, Lillian. Do you hear yourself? The only person who calls me Lillian is my mother, which is why I hate Lillian. But then you come along and say it, and suddenly I don’t hate it anymore, which is deeply upsetting because I have spent years cultivating that hatred.
And now you’ve just...ruined it. Completely derailed one of my core personality stances.
Do you understand how destabilizing that is?
Does that make any sense at all?” When he didn’t answer, I snapped, “Speak!”
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely,” he said quickly, fighting a smirk like it physically pained him to keep it in.
“I hate that you pretend not to be a nice guy even though you are,” I said, calmer now.
“I hate that you cook for me every night, and care if I skip meals, and that you take off my shoes when I fall asleep on the couch. I hate that you wipe my mascara when I’m too tired to.
I hate that you make it impossible not to like you.
” By now, my voice was trembling. “Honestly, Khalifa? I hate that I told you not to fall in love with me and then I went ahead and fell in love with you instead.”
The silence that followed pressed against my ribs. The candles flickered, throwing shadows that looked suspiciously like hope.
“I hate you, too,” he said finally. His mouth cracked into the smallest, gentlest smile. “And also...I love you, Lillian.”
It was a quiet confession—quiet in the way most devastating truths usually were.
It didn’t need a violin swell, or a perfectly timed thunderstorm, or any of the cinematic theatrics people seemed to think were supposed to accompany a moment like this.
It landed softly, and somehow that softness hit harder, in all the sweet, tender places I’d assumed were untouchable.
Those three words weren’t something I heard often.
Or ever, really. From anyone. I never would’ve imagined that Khalifa, of all people, would be the first to give them to me.
Yet here we were, half-lit by melting candles, half-destroyed by each other, and his quiet confession felt louder than anything I’d ever heard.
“You love me?” I asked dubiously.
“Yes.”
“But...I’m rude.”
“I prefer the term delightfully blunt.”
“And arrogant.”
“Very arrogant,” he corrected. “Might’ve been a deal breaker if it wasn’t so immensely attractive.”
“And I’m a slob.”
“Yes, but you’re my slob.”
“I’m impulsive,” I insisted, unsure whether I was trying to convince him that he couldn’t love me, or myself that I couldn’t be loved. “I say all the wrong things.”
He didn’t hesitate. “You don’t say the wrong things,” he said. “You say the honest ones. They’re only wrong to the wrong people.”
I rolled my eyes and grumbled, “I’m kind of a brat.”
“The biggest brat,” he confirmed, but with a tone so full of affection it thawed every defense I’d ever built.
My pulse stuttered, and something inside me—something I’d spent years trying to tame—rose to the surface. “I’m too tall,” I whispered, the words catching. “Too loud. Too much.”
“It’s true,” he breathed. “You’re too tall, too loud, too much.
But that’s the thing, Lillian—you were never meant to fit quietly into anyone’s life.
You were meant to wreck me beautifully. And if this is what too much looks like, then I’ll happily spend forever drowning in it.
” His voice roughened as he added, “I’m sorry that your mother made you believe you were hard to love.
Because falling for you?” His eyes locked onto mine like the words were sacred truth.
“It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done. The most inevitable thing I’ve ever done. ”
For one suspended, traitorous heartbeat, I almost let myself feel it.
Then I shook my head. “No.”
His forehead creased. “No?”
“Yes, no,” I said. “How am I supposed to believe you? I ripped myself open for you—more than once—and instead of helping me stitch myself back together, you just left me there, exposed and bleeding and trying to pretend I wasn’t.”
He looked like I’d just kicked the air out of him.
“And then we have sex,” I barrelled on, “and suddenly you’re in love with me? How do I know this isn’t just a side effect of a really good orgasm?”
He raised a brow, amused. “Really good? Someone’s cocky.”
Heat flared up my neck. I folded my arms, attempting dignity. “You said that was attractive.”
“Immensely attractive,” he said without hesitation. “And you are also very much correct.”
We just...looked at each other then. Too long. Long enough that the memories from last night flickered through my entire body like a power surge, making my knees feel dangerously unreliable.
“Stop,” I whispered.
His pretty mouth curled. “Stop what?”
“Distracting me with your—your steamy staring,” I snapped, waving a hand vaguely in his direction. “Physical things can fizzle out, Khalifa, but emotions...”