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I blinked.That’swho he had been with?
“Still, it has to be someone else.”
“And why couldn’t it be you?”
“Because we talkedonce.You may have liked me, but that’s not enough to fall for someone. And you obviously were messaging her, because I saw you. And I don’t get why you’d lie and make it seem about me when I saw it with my own two eyes.”
“I’m not lying. I’m just terrified of what you’ll say when you figure it out.”
“Figurewhatout?”
“Do you remember what you saw? Do you remember what app it was on?”
At first, I shook my head, but I knew it wasn’t a text. It could have been anything, but it looked familiar, like something I used.
“Wait a second, it looked like Discord.”
“Yes, it was.”
“And you’re saying it was always me so ...” I trailed off. Messages through Discord.
And he was scrolling through a lot of them.
Suddenly, I was back in college, reading a note from someone who knew who I was.
But I didn’t know him.
“V,” I said slowly. “The only person I ever talked to through Discord was a guy named V.”
He didn’t look shocked. “I know.”
“Youknow?How could you know? I only ever told Emma about him, but didn’t even use his name.”
“No onetoldme.”
There was a painful, sinking feeling in my gut.
“You know because youareV, aren’t you?”
He let out a long sigh as if he were preparing himself for war. “Yes. I am.”
“I—what?But V was the guy I nearly bowled over when I was running to my dorm.”
“That was me too.” His brow creased. “I assumed you recognized me because you wouldn’t look me in the eye.”
“I had a migraine. The whole day was blurry.” I couldn’t look at him and I sank onto the couch. “But the letter was so vague. It was just about a book.”
“If you knew it was me, you wouldn’t want to talk to me. I figured I could explain eventually if I could just get you to talk. But then you called me,Levi,an asshole, so I figured any apology I had wouldn’t work.”
“Then why keep going?”
“I just wanted to talk to you, even if you didn’t know who I was.”
Everything rearranged itself in my mind to fit this new information. “So you lied? You were V the whole time and you didn’t tell me?”
“When was I supposed to tell you?”
“When youmarriedme, Levi. God, I trusted V. What was this? A joke?”