I should have felt relieved.
Instead, I felt the weight of what came next.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we take our time.”
He sat beside me.
“No rushing. No secrets. No using each other to hurt Delaney.”
I looked at him.
“And if people never believe us?”
“Then we keep telling the truth.”
I smiled sadly.
“You make it sound easy.”
“It isn’t.”
He reached for my hand.
“But I’d rather face a difficult truth with you than spend the rest of my life pretending.”
For the next few weeks, we tried to be sensible.
We went for walks. We ate dinner at ordinary restaurants. We talked about our families and our childhoods.
We did not kiss.
We did not spend nights together.
We were both trying to determine whether our feelings were real or whether the pressure of the scandal had simply brought us closer.
The answer came on a rainy Thursday evening.
