“Was what fun?”
“Whatever you were up to.” I tried to sound nonchalant, but it came out forced.
“Nothing to worry about. How are you feeling?”
I felt like I’d been stomped on. Mostly because of his vaguenessabout everything. I wanted—no, needed—to know what he was up to. But I didn’t have the right to know.
“I’m fine. Mollie’s a bit jealous that I’m not suffering more, but it’s not a huge deal.”
“It’s going by fast,” he said.
“It is. And we have a lot to figure out.”
“That we do.” He muttered it, eyes cast downward. He seemed to be lost in thought. He also barely looked me in the eye.
I needed to say something. I couldn’t put it off.
“About that setup. If I offended you in any way or hurt your feelings, I’m really sorry about it.”
His head shot up. “How the absolute hell did you figure that out?”
“You seem off, and sometimes I can read you. It’s either that, or you think I’m ugly after being next to April for a while.”
His eyes narrowed. “That second one is not likely.”
“That’s why I apologized first. I do have self-esteem, you know.”
“It was the wording you used when you said you knew what kind of guy I was. Someone also said that a very long time ago, and it wasn’t so nice.”
My heart sank into my ass. “Oh, God, I didn’t mean it in any type of way. Seriously, I don’t care what you get up to when you’re not around me. It didn’t come from a place of judgment.”
“I get it. But recently, I haven’t loved the kind of guy I’ve been seen as.”
That could mean two things. One, he didn’t like the idea of being a father or the idea of being responsible. But I knew Dean. I knew that was highly unlikely.
And the other option? He didn’t like being known as the playboy.
I wanted the second onesobad, but people didn’t change. I wasn’t this lucky.
“Fuck, I guess I’m doing this,” he muttered to himself. He took a shaky breath before he spoke. “I like you. A lot. And that’s terrifying because you could turn me down, and it would crush me. But I still want you to know that. I want you to know that it’s you. It’s been you since the day we met. Even when I didn’t know what was happening.”
I should have said something intelligent back, but he was saying the very thing that I thought would never happen. So my answer was, “Uh, bu—wha?”
“I know this is out of character for me, or at least the version that I’ve shown people. I used to want this, but someone told me that I would never have it, and that I wasn’t the kind of guy for it, and I let that go. Mostly to protect myself. Somewhere along the way, protecting myself became less important than ... you.”
There was no way this was real. There was no way that Dean had walked into my shop and confessed that he liked me. This was supposed to be off the table. This was never supposed to happen.
Slowly, I reached my hand over to my forearm and pinched hard.
Dean watched and his eyebrows furrowed. “What are you doing?”
“I’m making sure that I’m actually awake right now.”
“Because you wanna wake up or because ...” He trailed off. Dean couldn’t sit still. Since I’d lived with him, I learned to read him pretty well. But I was sure that even Hugh could see how nervous he was.
I shook myself out of it. “Because I feel the same way. And I thought I was ridiculous for feeling that way because you told me from the beginning that you didn’t do relationships. So this has to be a dream. And if I wake up, I’m gonna be pissed.”
He lit up like a kid on Christmas. “You feel the same way?”