Lessons in Faking (Hall Beck University #1)

Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

“It’s my broken ribs.”

“You cannot blame everything on your broken ribs.” My brows rose along with the corners of my mouth, and I shook my head as I continued to sneak curious glances at his screen. “Not when it’s almost been a month.”

“When I took this exam—” He waved his phone around, though the motion was too quick for me to read what it said on the screen. “I was out of the hospital for a week. And it’s showing .”

“So show me!” I whined, rolling from my side of the bed over to his, where he sat propped against the backrest.

We had woken up to emails about our Statistics II grades being posted. It was to be expected: today was the end of Shaw’s two-week period to do so. Still, I had about a million better things to do in the mornings. Like, not think about Statistics and the possibility of failing a class— the class my mother’s legacy had been built upon.

“No.”

In one quick movement, I straddled his lap, face hovering right in front of his with a grin. “Please?” I pressed a quick kiss to his nose, then his cheek, then his chin. Dylan huffed in irritation.

“That’s not fair,” he muttered under his breath, managing to catch my face in his hands before I could press a kiss to his lips and seal the deal.

His brown eyes twitched into an amused glare, corner of his lip curling into a smirk. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he said, and I groaned, dramatically falling off his lap before snuggling against his side.

“I don’t know mine.”

“You haven’t checked?”

“No.”

An incredulous look spread across his features when I craned my neck up to look at him. “What?” I huffed. “I’m not particularly fond of ruining my day already. It just started.” The humor in my voice fell on deaf ears.

“You don’t think you failed, do you?” Dylan sat up straighter now, turned to me with his serious-face on full display.

I hadn’t thought about how my fear of failing might affect him.

Would it be insulting? After the hours he’d poured into making sure I wouldn’t fail, was thinking I had ungrateful? My mouth stayed shut, gaze steering clear of his, as I took in the white flower patterns on my white bedding. Beautiful stitching .

“Athalia.”

My eyes snapped back to his, Serious-Dylan still in control of the conversation. I shrugged.

“Maybe,” I muttered, more so to myself. He heard me anyway.

“You were so confident after that exam,” he reminded me, his head tilting slightly, in both confusion and encouragement alike.

“It’s called post-final euphoria ,” I explained. “You know? When you’re done with all your exams, and you finally feel like you have a life again.”

He looked me dead in the eyes and said, “No.” And it reminded me of all the reasons we shouldn’t have worked so well for the past few weeks. He was a workaholic at the ripe age of twenty-three. I hadn’t thought about work for longer than a total of ten minutes of my life.

He was always busy. I was mostly bored.

College, grades, and graduating were his purpose. I was still trying to find mine.

He took life so seriously. I… didn’t.

It was a weird whirlwind of mismatches that somehow just… matched. When I’d been ready to throw in the towel and drop out––which happened at least three times a week during finals––Dylan was there to keep me grounded.

When he’d get lost in his head, overworked himself or forgot to sleep, I was there to drag him into bed and sentence him to an eight-hour sleep.

“Come on.” He nudged my side gently, brows rising when my eyes slid back to him. “I know you want to.” Then he wiggled his eyebrows, and my lips broke into a grin before I could bury my head in the pillows. Two groans left me.

The first one acknowledged how little I wanted to look. The second one acknowledged I would have to eventually. So why not now?

“If I’m in a bad mood the entire ride to D.?C.,” I warned as I sat up, reaching for my phone on the nightstand. “That’s on you, and I’ll never let you forget.” Though Dylan didn’t respond, just watched me unlock my phone, immediately landing me in my inbox.

One more glance at him made me turn my screen slightly, and a muffled complaint slipped past his lips. “Just let me check first,” I muttered, suddenly tenser than I’d like to admit when I clicked on the link provided in the email. I typed in the login for the account, keeping myself from visibly shaking as the page loaded.

I swallowed thickly, my eyes glued to the screen in both anticipation and dread alike.

“And?” Dylan nudged, but I just held up a hand, watching the spinning wheel on the screen, my heart dropping when it disappeared and made way for the grading system.

And there it was.

There it was.

There. It. Was.

My face distorted in a mixture of emotions I couldn’t quite explain. Disbelief was somewhere in there, almost overshadowed entirely by confusion and relief, gratefulness, and joy.

My gaze snapped up to his, letting my phone fall into my lap while a wide grin grew on my face.

“Thank you!” I screeched, wishing I could jump him without the possibility of breaking a rib again. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

The concern in his features fell at once, opening his arms to welcome me in with a smile, equally as wide as mine. “See?” he whispered into my hair, placing his head on top of mine with a huff. “Nothing to worry about.”

He said that without having seen my grade. Whether I had barely passed with a C or aced the exam with an A seemed to be none of his concern anymore. Whatever grade I was content with, he’d be proud of, too.

“You really showed Shaw, didn’t you?”

“Technically…” My head lifted from his chest, a smirk on my lips as I looked at him. “I showed you, too.” His quirked brow made me go on. “You thought I was a hopeless case. You even told Shaw I was!”

His face softened as he remembered. “Oh.” He hummed, then shook his head. “I would never do that.”

“But you told me—”

“Athalia,” he sighed, the sound deep and long and calming. “There wasn’t a second in all this where I didn’t believe in you.”

I think my heart just got bigger, simply to let more of him in.

“I knew how smart you were before you ever stepped foot into my office, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind you wouldn’t thrive, with a little guidance and the right… motivation.”

“So you lied to me? About the Shaw thing?”

“Of course I did.” And his honesty—how unapologetic he was about it—was so relieving.

“What else?” I wondered, my head tilting in curiosity and amusement alike. “Did you lie about, I mean.”

He thought for a second, then looked back at me. Shrugged. “Hating you.”

“Hating me?”

“Probably even just disliking you a little bit. But I lied to myself about that for longer.”

The realization of that settled. For a long minute. And I wished I could say the same back, have this be our full-circle moment, where we’d realize we had both been undyingly in love with each other from the moment we had laid eyes on the other.

Not that we’d said I love you . Not the words. I think those slipped out so soon in my previous relationships, I’d like to savor them until I’d burst if I wouldn’t tell him. I think Dylan’s previous relationships didn’t last long enough to even consider it. This was uncharted territory for both of us, in a way.

And maybe that made it easier.

Refraining from saying the words, didn’t mean we weren’t still making it known every single day. Every time he carried me from couch to bed when I’d fallen asleep on it, every bad joke he laughed at, every meal he cooked when I suggested takeout, and every offer of my help in the latter he declined said I love you all over again.

So I just smiled at his words, my nose crinkling. “I knew you’ve always been obsessed with me,” I joked, a lightheartedness replacing the silence his admission had left behind. Dylan’s eyes rolled in that incredibly endearing way before he pressed a kiss on my forehead and hurled himself out of bed.

“God,” he sighed as he stretched, giving me an incredible view of his body in nothing but boxer briefs. The bruising across his ribs had gone down, only slightly blue and purple, and much less menacing-looking. “I forget how much of a pain in the ass you are sometimes.”

Which was just another one of the million ways of saying I love you he had adopted.

I love you too, Dylan McCarthy Williams.