Chapter 17

Lilith hadn’t come back to the condo after storming out with a suitcase in hand. Not that Dane expected her to, or even to explain her plans. But it would have been nice to know for sure what was happening. He didn’t dare send her a funny text, just to see if she’d answer, so he could assure himself she wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere.

At least once every ten minutes, he considered casually strolling down to Relâcher to see if she might be there, but then didn’t because it was too stalkerish. At some point, he should probably start packing his own stuff. The crew had left under the premise that they would come back as soon as Lilith got her head back in the game. Or rather the director had ordered Dane to ensure that happened and then to call him when they were ready to resume. Otherwise, the next conversation would be with the studio’s lawyers.

That was the least of Dane’s concerns at the moment.

The rest of his life stretched before him, both long and lonely. Funny how he’d never really considered what would happen after the show. For so long, he’d focused on nothing but his immediate goals. He’d embarked on a life-improvement plan, and in a lot of ways, he could call that part a success.

New face, new body, new voice. All of it had been hard won. And even appearing on the show had revealed a new confidence in and of itself that he could honestly say he was proud of.

It had taken the events of the last few days for him to realize that his efforts had been incomplete. Instead of creating a disguise that would cease to exist after the truth came out, the moment he’d married Lilith, he’d morphed into someone else. A man who had become the only version of himself that he wanted to be. Without her, he was only partially complete.

And he’d destroyed everything.

Of course Lilith hadn’t responded when he’d told her he loved her. Why would she? Those dominoes had been stacked up long before they’d first faced off in the audition. Would things have been different if he’d told her the truth then? Probably. She’d have flounced from the stage and he’d never have seen her again. Better for her, for sure, but he’d never know what it was like to be in her orbit, what her smile did to his insides, how invincible she’d make him feel.

He wouldn’t trade that for anything. Even the pain that rode shotgun behind his rib cage as his new constant companion.

Since he couldn’t stop dwelling on it, the only solution to pass the time was to pick up a new freelance hacking job. Problem being, of course, that he wasn’t at home with the right equipment, and neither could he force himself to leave the condo he shared with Lilith, even though she wasn’t currently in it. He could still smell her shampoo at odd times, and then it would vanish, leaving him to wonder if he’d imagined it in his Lilith-induced stupor that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than one of the stages of grief.

So that meant he did a lot of random web-surfing. Today the subject du jour seemed to be spas. He couldn’t avoid the name Relâcher online and honestly, he wasn’t trying very hard. Each time he saw it, it was a knife to the gut, and he considered that part and parcel of his due.

The timbre of his searches began to change as he absorbed that some of the things he was reading had a negative tone. He sat up and started paying a lot more attention. These were the reviews Lilith had alluded to when she’d told him her sister had done a number on Relâcher with bad press. He hadn’t thought much at the time about how that had manifested, but this had to be what she’d meant.

Over and over again, he found places where Relâcher had been called out for bad business practices, unfriendly staff, health violations. Nothing from credible news sources, but all in comments on various forums and articles that mentioned Dallas spas. A pattern began to emerge, a digital footprint that only someone with his level of skill could accurately trace.

Methodically, he started taking notes, creating an index of the sites in the mental space that automatically opened when he put on his hacker hat. Only it wasn’t white this time. More of a mottled gray. Because he wasn’t going to hack into these sites with the purest of intentions.

Fourteen hours later, he’d deleted a sum total of one hundred and forty-seven comments, patched six different vulnerabilities on eighteen of the sites’ servers—because he couldn’t leave those holes in place for someone with evil intentions to find—and had located the IP address of the original source of all the comments.

Lilith’s sister, if she was right about who had spread all these malicious statements that had adversely affected her business. Now she didn’t have to depend on the show to fix anything, and she could walk away from all of this without a backward glance.

He sent a message to the admin of the IP’s webhost explaining what he’d done so the owner of the address would know who was to blame. Otherwise, Dane’s digital fingerprints would create hours of unnecessary work for a forensic specialist assigned to figure out whether data had been stolen. This way, everyone could trace exactly what he’d touched. It was a courtesy that many in his profession chose not to honor, but he wasn’t that guy.

Sleep. He needed some. Blearily, he stumbled to the bed and fell into it face down, dead to the world.

Sometime later, the click of the front door closing woke him. Surely it had been his imagination. Who would be coming through the front door? Not Lilith. But what if it was?

Dane cracked an eye open to glance at the watch still strapped to his wrist. 8:00. AM or PM? Prying his lids open, he levered his head toward the window. Still couldn’t tell.

But he couldn’t leave the mystery sound uninvestigated. He rolled to the floor, got his feet under him, and trudged into the living room.

Everything inside him blipped to life as he absorbed the sight of Lilith standing in the kitchen staring at the coffee maker. She glanced over her shoulder. “I still don’t know how this works.”

“It’s a little tricky,” he rumbled, his voice need-soaked and sleep-roughened. “Let me make it for you.”

She nodded but didn’t step aside even as he came into the kitchen, crowding into her space. He’d only meant to get close enough to work the coffee maker since she’d brought it up, but all at once, there was nothing but a few millimeters between them, and she blinked up at him, skewering him with her gaze.

Frozen, he stood there letting the tension mount, because there was only one thing that would work to break it, and he didn’t think she’d appreciate being swept up into his embrace. His fingers itched to reach for her, to feather a thumb across her mouth. He didn’t. Nothing could stop him from imagining it though.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” she murmured. “I wasn’t going to come.”

“But you did.” She was here. Really here and not a figment of his sleep deprived brain. Greedily, his senses drank her in. The little crescent under her right eye. The fullness of her bottom lip. The way her hair brushed her shoulders. “Why did you come?”

He hated to ask, hated to destroy the perfect moment of peace between them. Couldn’t he just enjoy it and stop being so obsessive? Apparently not.

“Rohina called me,” she said, sounding dazed. “My sister. She said someone hacked into her computer and deleted everything she’d written about my spa. That there was a note suggesting if she posted anything else, that would be deleted too.”

“Oh, well that’s interesting,” Dane hedged, since Lilith hadn’t said whether she approved of such measures or not. Though if he’d known that would get her here, he might have done it a long time ago.

“It’s very interesting. Interesting is a great word for it. She called to surrender and congratulated me on getting the best of her. It wasn’t sincere. She’s super upset with me. I’m sure she’ll come up with another plan to punish me. I can’t seem to care about that right now.”

Something heavy and meaningful spilled into her eyes, and she didn’t bother to hide it. He didn’t bother to stop himself from hungrily searching her gaze for more. “What do you care about?”

“Whether you did it as an apology or a last-ditch effort to get me to forgive you.”

“Neither one,” he said and held up his hands in capitulation, as if that might convey his sincerity. “It was strictly so you could walk away if you wanted to. No more Bride at First Sight. You have all the cards. Play them.”

“I lost track of what game we were playing a long time ago,” she said softly. “That was a dirty rotten trick, Dane. Now I have no reason to stay. What am I supposed to do with that?”

Every ounce of hope that had bloomed in his chest when he saw her in the kitchen died a horrible death. She wasn’t here to say his efforts had caused her to reconsider. She wasn’t thinking about forgiving him because he’d fixed the problems with her spa. She was walking away. He had to let her.

“You’re supposed to do what makes sense for you,” he told her earnestly, doing everything in his power to let her see inside him, so she could understand that he was being as truthful as possible. He owed her transparency and a whole lot more. “I’m done trying to manipulate the situation to my advantage. That’s what I’ve come to realize was my mistake in all of this. I only thought I was in love with you back in high school but that was a mere shadow of how I feel now. Being fake married to you revealed the ultimate reality, for me anyway, and now I can honestly say that I love you more now than I ever did before. That’s why I care more about you and what’s best for you than for me. I wanted to give you the only thing that I could. Freedom. You’re no longer tied to me in any way.”

And the same applied to him. A weight lifted off his chest that he hadn’t even known was there. He could move on himself, find a new path, any path. The world was wide open. He had new confidence, a minor bit of fame that got him recognized at the grocery store, and he owed no one anything.

With that, his transformation was complete. He was the best version of himself that he could be. No matter what happened next, he was proud of who he’d become. Who Lilith had helped him become, even unknowingly. He could let her go—not easily and not without regret. But he could. Because he was better for his time with her.

Except Lilith didn’t nod and throw a wave over her shoulder as she took the out he’d just handed her on a silver platter. She stood there staring at the ground. When she glanced up, her eyes brimmed with unshed tears.

“Except that’s not true,” she whispered. “I’m so completely tied to you. Because in spite of it all, I miss you. I miss our life together. All of it. It’s one hundred percent everything I never knew I wanted. I want it to be real, Dane.”

Something bright and hot and sweet and amazing burst open in his throat, spreading honey-like through his blood until there was nothing left but her.

“Same,” he rasped. “So much exactly the same for me. All of it.”

She held up a hand to stop him when he moved closer, correctly guessing he’d been about to reach out. “But I can’t believe that it is real. That there’s any hope of sorting out which parts of us are fake and which parts are genuine. You aren’t even using your real name.”

“I am,” he countered immediately. “I had it legally changed. I am Dane McClarren, but I only recently realized how much more to me there should have been than just the surface level stuff. You make me whole, Lilith. I can’t be Dane McClarren unless you’re a part of me. My present and my future.”

She shut her eyes for a beat. “I thought you were letting me go. That doesn’t sound like a man who is fine with us splitting up.”

“I’m not fine with letting you go, but I would. If it was what you wanted. I would just have to spend a really long time mending my broken heart, that’s all.” Completely over the distance between them, he snagged her hand and held it to his cheek. “Just in case it’s not clear, you’re more than enough for me. I don’t want anything else in the whole world but you. Nothing would make me happier than to propose to you with all the genuine love that’s stored up inside me.”

She didn’t hesitate at all, just fell forward trusting that he would catch her, and he did. The tension between them vanished as he snuggled her up in his embrace. Everything inside him clicked into place and a moment of pure bliss flooded his senses. This was what happiness should feel like.

He buried his lips in her hair, memorizing every nuance of this because he didn’t have to imagine Lilith in his arms. She was here. Miraculously.

“So, I hate to ask.” But he was going to anyway. “Is this a green light? Yellow light? Yield sign?”

“It’s an I love you, too,” she said her voice muffled against his shirt. “And I’m scared but scared of losing you more. I forgive you, but so help me, if you ever lie to me again, I will…probably forgive you again. Because I’m kind of an idiot about you, in case that’s a newsflash.”

That made him smile more broadly than it should have. “I’m an idiot about you too. But I’m guessing you already figured that out.”

“The fact you legally changed your name tipped the scales.”

“Really? That was the thing?” Such a minor detail. “Not that I nipped your sister’s campaign in the bud? Because that was pretty inspired, if I do say so myself.”

“It was brilliant,” she said and lifted her lips to kiss him on the cheek, which he quickly turned into a real kiss because there was no way he was missing out on that when she was right there, ripe for the kissing. She pulled back, laughing, which lightened his heart in a way nothing else could. “The second she used the word ‘hack,’ I knew it was you. I think that was when I realized it was too late for me. I was so far in love with you that I couldn’t do anything but figure out how to fix this.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Pulling her back by her forearms, he searched her expression. “Are you saying you walked in the door already planning to tell me you wanted a real shot?”

She shrugged with a mischievous smile. “I wasn’t completely sure. I mean, I was thinking the whole time about what a mess it would be if we got married. Would I be Lilith Long or Lilith McClarren, and wouldn’t it be ridiculous to call myself by your fake reality show made-up name. Only to find out that I worried about nothing.”

His heart swelled as he imagined Lilith in a white dress walking down the aisle to marry him for real. “If you really were worried about it, you could always just keep your maiden name. I’m enlightened like that.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter because you haven’t asked me to marry you.”

“Not yet.” But he would, no doubt. As soon as he figured out the perfect proposal. She deserved to have the real thing, and he was just the man to give it to her.