Five days.

Five days of calls.

Five days of meeting Selma in the hallway while she lives at his apartment.

Five days of crying with Oliver in my arms.

And finally, on Saturday at four in the morning, there’s a knock on my door. Actually, it’s more of a pounding.

I know exactly who it is, and I don’t answer it. I don’t want to hear his lame excuse as to why he didn’t feel the need to tell me he was engaged to be married.

“Open the goddamn door, Amalie!” Tathan shouts, slamming his hand on the door. And then I hear him talking to someone, actually yelling at someone.

Peeking through the peephole, I see him standing there, looking like hot hell, and his hand wrapped around Selma’s upper arm, scowling at her.

“Why’d you fucking show up here and make her believe we’re still together?”

Holding my breath until I feel like my lungs are going to burst, I stand on wobbly legs waiting for her answer.

Selma stutters, probably tired. “Jesus, Tathan. I didn’t know you’d moved on so quickly.” It looks like he ripped her straight from bed, wearing his clothes.

His scowl deepens. “So quickly? We’ve been broken up for over a year. Remember? I caught you in bed with another guy.”

Selma rips her arm from his grasp. “It was an accident.”

“Whatever it was. . . it meant we were over.”

My heart leaps in my chest. It was over between them? So. . . he didn’t lie?

I rip the door open. “What do you want?”

Tathan’s eyes snap to mine, fire flaring in them. “Five days. I’ve been calling you nonstop for five fucking days.” He smacks his hand at Selma, knocking her shoulder lightly. “She is not my fiancée. She’s a lying whore who slept with my friend. In. My. Bed.”

I glare at Selma but say nothing. I want to punch her in the face. How dare she hurt him and lie to me. But then again, when my eyes meet the tired man beside her, why’d I believe her so easily and not the one who’d made me a deal to fall in love with him?

There’s a water trickling sound, like, well, pee. In shock, Selma looks down at her feet. “Oh my God! Your stupid dog peed on me.”

No one calls Oliver stupid!

“He doesn’t like women.”

“You’re a woman,” Selma points out, looking like she’s going to vomit.

“I’m his mom.”

And get this, when Oliver spots Tathan, he wiggles and rubs up against his legs. Traitor.

Reaching down to ruffle his floppy ears, Tathan smiles at him.

Selma huffs out a breath and stomps back to Tathan’s apartment.

“You have five minutes to get the fuck out of there,” Tathan tells her over his shoulder. With a gentle push, he shoves me back in my apartment and locks the door behind him. “We need to talk, and you’re not ignoring me this time.”

Defiantly, I cross my arms over my chest. “I don’t have to do what you say.”

“Yes, you do. You fucking drove me crazy this week. I. . . .” He pauses, dropping his bags at my feet. Goddamn, angry Tathan is just. . . fuck. I have no words. But he does and continues with, “You have no idea.”

“You have no idea.” I can be such a brat sometimes.

“Whatever you say.” He laughs, sarcasm lacing the sound of bitterness. With his eyes on mine, he backs me against the wall. I don’t know where Oliver disappeared to, but I’m trapped in Tathan’s steal embrace. “I love you.” He blurts it out. Just like that. No messing around. “I need you. Not to survive, but to make my life worth living. I’m not letting a misunderstanding destroy that.”

Goddamn him. “I don’t even know if I like you.” God, I’m a horrible liar.

He dips his head, catching my eyes and then let’s go of my wrists he had pinned to the wall. Framing my face, he kisses me. Just a quick one, then pulls away. “Bullshit. Yes, you do. I know you’re scared. You’re afraid of the realness of this. You’re scared you won’t be able to walk away from me.”

This motherfucker is too smart for his own good. “I uh. . . .” I can’t form words. Instead, my lips find his, and I show him how right he actually is.

But then I pull back, just like he had. My mind twists and tumbles over everything I want to say to him. “I have some things I need to say to you. . . and it’s really important that you listen to me.”

He nods slowly, his expression completely unreadable.

Taking a deep breath, I decide not to wait any longer and spill everything I wanted to say over the past couple weeks and had forgotten in the five days of hell. “After Colton, I told myself I wouldn’t depend on a man ever again. I wouldn’t let one in. I thought I understood how love worked, too. To really love someone, the way you need to, there’s a certain amount of dependence there. Dependence I wasn’t going to give anyone because I was scared I wouldn’t be able to walk away.”

“Like I said.”

“Let me finish,” I say, slapping at him.

Tathan crosses his arms over his chest, leaning away from me and against the wall behind him. Fuck, there he goes again leaning. “Fine. Finish.”

“Well,” I smile. “I actually was done.”

A huge weight lifts off my shoulders. Even if he rejects me now—which he won’t because he said he loved me already—at least he knows how I really feel about him, even if I hadn’t told him I loved him.

When I raise my eyes to his, part of me is surprised to see him smiling. But there’s a certain sadness to his eyes. I remember it from before. That night he took me up to Camelback Mountain to watch the sunset and briefly mentioned being engaged at one time. That sadness, it’s still there. A sadness he isn’t sure he can let go of. A hole he never mended.

I never realized it, until now, with that sadness lying under the surface of his expression that we’d both been hurt by love.

“The way I love you is fucking consuming,” Tathan says, laughing under his breath. He stares at me. “I probably shot the worst photographs of my life this week.”

“You terrify me,” I admit. “You fucking terrified me.”

His arms wrap around me, drawing me into his chest. “I know,” he agrees, turning his head into my hair, then sighs. Tathan breaths out a long breath in my ear. “Look at me, Amalie,” he says, his voice cracking. I can’t though. I try, again, and still can’t. I’ll cry if I do and I cried enough this week. I don’t want to do it anymore. “Please. . . just look at me.”

Tensing and squeezing my eyes shut, I pull back and look up at him.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you by not telling you about her.” He’s speaking softly, trying to make me see. “It took me months to get her out of my head, and I still haven’t. I don’t love her, but you know as well as I do, being hurt like that doesn’t go away. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to go back to that time in my life, if that makes sense.” He swallows, drawing in a deep breath. “Do you know how hard it was to stay in Santa Monica this week with you ignoring me?”

I nod, as though I had expected his response, because I did. My hand moved to his jawline, sighing heavily. “I’m sorry I ignored you.”

Tathan opens his mouth several times to speak and then finally asks, “Do you trust me?”

“Should I trust you?” I ask, and he arches an eyebrow in surprise, making me look in his eyes, hating the heartache at the expression on his face. “My gut tells me I should.”

“Then tell me you love me. Tell me you want this as much as I do.” There’s an easiness about Tathan I adore. A softness I’ve never experienced before him. It’s something I missed this week, and now he’s here, his gentleness is calming.

I want to let the words fall out, so natural, so true they have depths and valleys I can barely understand. I can, however, understand three very simple ones. The ones he’s looking for.

Reluctantly, my eyes lock on his. “I love you,” I tell him, moving toward him again.

With a jerked motion, his fingers dive into my hair, and he inhales deeply. It’s everything I’d been waiting for since he left on Sunday.

Our lips part and he slides one hand around my waist, pressing me flush against his chest.