I Lost 90 Pounds, Only To Find He Tried To Give Me Away Chapter 10

I Lost 90 Pounds, Only To Find He Tried To Give Me Away Chapter 10

A late-summer storm hit fast and hard.

I stood under the overhang of the lecture hall, watching it come down.

I hadn’t brought an umbrella.

An umbrella appeared over my head. A shadow fell across me.

Nolan stood there, one hand in his pocket, the other holding the umbrella. He tilted his head and smiled.

“Stranded, Tessa?”

“Good thing I’ve got room for two. Come on, I’ll walk you back.”

I rolled my eyes.

Then I spotted Theo coming out of the building, and my face lit up.

“Theo! Over here!”

Theo looked over, and his eyes softened the second he saw me.

But when he noticed Nolan next to me, the warmth fell right off his face.

He walked over to me. “I don’t have one either. Ready to make a run for it?”

I grinned. “Let’s do it.”

“On three!”

Theo pulled off his jacket and held it over my head, grinning.

“Run!”

We ran straight into the rain, laughing as the water soaked us to the bone. Neither of us looked back at Nolan standing alone under his umbrella.

The jacket didn’t do much. By the time we reached the dorm, we were both completely soaked.

We looked at each other and laughed.

Rain hammered the pavement around us. People rushed past, heads down, and the wind bent the maple

branches sideways.

But neither of us moved to go inside.

After a moment, we both spoke at once.

“Theo, why do you

“Tessa, there’s something -”

“You first,” I said.

“You first,” he said.

We’d said it at the exact same time. Again.

Theo’s lips twitched into a nervous smile.

He ran a wet hand through his hair and took a breath.

“I’ll go first.”

“Tessa… I lied to you.”

“The guy who dated you online for that first year. It wasn’t me.”

“I bought Nolan’s account and started dating you as him. I’ve been going back and forth about whether to tell

you. Part of me hoped you’d never find out. But I don’t want to lie to you. I don’t want us built on a lie.”

I didn’t react. He froze.

“You already knew?”

I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him.

He dropped his gaze. A faint, bitter smile crossed his face.

“I had a feeling. You pulled away a few weeks ago. I could feel the shift.”

He looked up, like he was gathering every bit of courage he had. “But Tessa… I didn’t just meet you recently.

I’ve known you for a long time.”

Now it was my turn to go still.

I didn’t remember a Theo.

A face like his? I would’ve remembered.

“I don’t remember. How do you…”

Theo pulled out his phone and scrolled to a photo. “You wouldn’t remember. I didn’t look like this back then.”

I looked at the photo. A chubby kid wearing our old weight-loss camp t-shirt stared back at me.

My breath caught.

Theo was… him?