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Chapter Thirty-Seven

Justin

My words echo in the air around us, mixing with the mournful cry of a seagull wheeling overhead.

Drew flinches like I’ve struck him. Those familiar hands that I’ve watched fix countless computer issues, that have touched me so tenderly, come up to adjust his glasses in that gesture I once found endearing but now feels like watching a stranger wear a beloved actor’s face.

Because he’s not Drew Smith, IT technician.

He’s Andrew Yates, multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur.

Everything I know about him is a lie.

The shame and embarrassment I carried from discovering I was the person who had made Drew’s life miserable has now curdled into anger.

Because he lied to me. So many times.

Everything that has happened between us, every moment of laughter, every touch, every secret confessed, was all built on a lie.

And that anger forces me to steel myself when I see the devastation on Drew’s face. Because I want to comfort him, and that betrayal cuts deeper than any other. That he’s made me love him so much that I still want to ease his hurt even while he’s breaking my heart.

“What else?” I ask.

“What do you mean, what else?”

“I mean, I want to know exactly what else you did that I don’t know about.”

He drops his gaze to the ground.

“Um…I was the mystery bidder for the date with you at the Second Chances auction.”

His words are like a sucker punch, forcing the air from my lungs. I put my hand on the railing to steady myself.

“You paid seventy-five thousand pounds to go on a date with me?” My words come out strangled.

“No, I paid seventy-five thousand pounds so you wouldn’t have to go on a date with Vivian! Because even then, even before we kissed, I cared about you!”

My mind spins back to the evening at the TīNG, how relieved I felt when my mystery date didn’t show up, how perfectly everything worked out.

How I had no idea my mystery date was actually sitting across from me, laughing with me about fancy desserts.

“Is there anything else I don’t know about?” I demand.

He bites his lip. “Um…I might have built an app for you.”

“You built an app for me? What do you mean?” The words are just out of my mouth when I clue into what he’s talking about. The world tilts sideways as puzzle pieces slot into place.

“The Recall+ app? You built that?” My lips feel numb.

“Yes. Well, I didn’t build it completely myself because I wanted it done in a short timeframe, but I hired app designers and oversaw the project.”

I claw my hand through my hair. “Fuck, was any of it real?”

“My feelings for you are real.” He says the words quietly, but they hit me like he’s shouted them.

He raises those brown eyes to mine.

“It started out as a game. Well, actually, I think I was honestly distracting myself from how empty my life was. And then, I started falling for you without realizing, and it reached the point where I didn’t want to tell you the truth because it would hurt you, and I didn’t want to do that!”

He stands there shivering in his thin dress shirt, his shoulders hunched against the wind, looking more like the vulnerable kid from high school than a successful tech entrepreneur.

“Justin, it turns out I don’t know as much about life as I thought I did… And trust me, this whole thing has made me aware of all my flaws. How I’m selfish and a coward, and I was telling myself that I was keeping the truth from you for your benefit because I didn’t want to hurt you. But really, it was because I was falling in love with you the whole time and didn’t realize because I’ve never fallen in love before. I didn’t want it to end because you are the best person I’ve ever met, and you just…fit me better than anyone else.”

His words hit me like a physical blow, each landing with a precise impact. It’s everything I spent months wanting him to say. The sincerity in his voice causes something to twist inside my chest, equal parts longing and betrayal fighting for dominance.

He wraps his arms around himself. A passing boat horn echoes across the Thames, and he startles, like he’s forgotten we’re standing in the middle of London on a morning in late December. His glasses have slipped down his nose, but for once, he doesn’t readjust them.

Instead, he keeps his gaze fixed on mine.

“And I’ll do anything…anything to make things right between us. Because I might have hundreds of millions of dollars, but they’ve never made me as happy as you’ve made me these last few months.”

His chest is heaving, and every rapid breath creates small clouds in the cold air between us like his words are taking physical form before dissolving into nothing.

The worst part is how much I want to believe him. How his words seem to bypass all my anger and hit something deeper, more vulnerable.

But trust, once shattered, leaves edges sharp enough to cut.

And I can’t get my head around the depth of his betrayal.

My confusion seeps out in a bitter laugh that sounds foreign to my own ears.

“Were you thinking about the revenge plot while sitting on the couch laughing with me? When you were bonding with my cats? When we were in bed together?”

“No, I—” Drew starts, but I cut him off.

“You made me so much more confident about who I am. And it’s not even about being comfortable being gay. It’s the fact that you made me like who I am now. But the whole thing was just a lie. Everything between us has just been a lie.”

“It hasn’t all been a lie.” He reaches for me instinctively, then lets his hand drop, the gesture hanging incomplete between us like an unfinished sentence.

His eyes mind mine, his gaze imploring. “Please, Justin, even if it’s all over between us, I don’t want you to doubt how incredible you are. You are so amazing that you made me fall in love with you even when I was trying to hate you!”

His eyes glisten with tears, making the brown look like whiskey held up to sunlight, and I have to look away before the sight breaks what’s left of my resolve.

He’s shivering violently in his thin dress shirt, his lips taking on the same shade as the winter sky above us, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care about anything except maintaining eye contact with me.

The urge to wrap my coat around his shoulders wars with my need to maintain distance. It’s exactly this, my urge to protect him, to take care of him, that makes everything so much harder. Because even now, knowing everything, I can’t stand the sight of him suffering.

I need to be away from him. I need to think.

“I need… I need for this conversation to be over. I need to not be around you right now. And you need to get warm. You’ve been sick, and you’re going to relapse if you stay out in this weather.”

There’s something on his face, a flash of guilt that hits me right in my core.

“Fuck, you weren’t even sick the other night, were you?”

Slowly, he shakes his head. “No, I wasn’t sick.”

A laugh escapes me, harsh and hollow like the December wind whipping around us. Of course he wasn’t sick. Of course that was just another excuse, another carefully crafted exit strategy when things got too real. I think of how I worried about him, how I wanted to take care of him, and the concern transforms into something bitter.

He’s a fake person.

He’s what Bobby Ray was at the start.

I’m like my mother. I fell in love with a fake person. With a person who was pretending to be someone they weren’t.

I back away from him, his outline blurring through the tears I refuse to let fall.

“I can’t…. I can’t be with anyone fake,” I say.

Drew just stares at me, his face pale.

“My mom used to say that loving someone means trusting them with your broken pieces,” I say, the words scraping my throat raw. “I thought you were helping put mine back together, but you were just…collecting evidence of the cracks.”

Drew’s face crumples at my words, but I force myself to turn away, leaving him on the riverbank with nothing but the cold December wind and the weight of everything broken between us.