Page 236 - The Love Hypothesis

coercive dynamic that—”

“I’m—” Olive laughed. “I’m not feeling coerced, I—”
“You’re in love with someone else!”
She almost recoiled. The way he spit out the words was that heated. It

should have put her off, driven her away, once and for all drilled into her
head how ridiculous this was, how disastrous an idea. It didn’t, though. By

now the moody, ill-tempered ass Adam meshed so well with her Adam, the
one who bought her cookies and checked her slides and let her cry into his

neck. There might have been a time when she couldn’t quite reconcile the
two, but they were all so clear now, the many faces of him. She wouldn’t

want to leave behind any of them. Not one.
“Olive.” He sighed heavily, closing his eyes. The idea that he might be
thinking of the woman who Holden mentioned flashed into her mind and

slipped away, too painful to entertain.
She should just tell him. She should be honest with him, admit that she

didn’t care about Jeremy, that there was no one else. Never had been. But
she was terrified, paralyzed with fear, and after the day she’d had, her heart

felt so easy to break. So fragile. Adam could shatter it in a thousand pieces,
and still be none the wiser.

“Olive, this is how you’re feeling now. A month from now, a week,
tomorrow, I don’t want you to regret—”
“What about what I want?” She leaned forward, letting her words soak

the silence for drawn-out seconds. “What about the fact that I want this?
Though maybe you don’t care.” She squared her shoulders, blinking quickly

against the prickling sensation in her eyes. “Because you don’t want it,
right? Maybe I’m just not attractive to you and you don’t want this—”

It nearly made her lose her balance, the way he tugged at her wrist and
pulled her hand to himself, pressing her palm flush to his groin to show her

that . . . Oh.
Oh.
Yeah.

His jaw rolled as he held her gaze. “You have no fucking idea what I
want.”