Free His for Now (His #2) by Octavia Wildwood Page A

as it turns out, doesn’t work if you can’t keep it meaningless.  Hence the name, I guess.  Shocking, huh?
    “ So I’m thinking we can leave,” Hayden murmured, his lips brushing my cheek.  “I’ve been my father’s pawn for far too long.  I want a life with you, Daniella.  I want to grow old with you.  We can get new identities and go anywhere you want.  You name the place and I’ll make it happen.  We’ll have to lie low for a few days while we wait for the new passports to come in, but after that…we can have a life together.”
    The promises he was making, the dreams of a future together…he made it sound so real and plausible that for a moment I let myself drift away, caught up in the fantasy.  But then I snapped back to reality.
    “Hayden.”
    “What?”
    “I have a life in Burlington,” I reminded him.  “It might not be the most exciting or eventful life – at least it wasn’t until now.  But it’s a life I’ve worked hard for.  I can’t just throw my career away.  Not when I’ve invested so much time and effort into it.”
    I was trying my best to let him down easy because in spite of everything, I couldn’t stand the thought of hurting him any more than I had to.  But he just wasn’t biting.  It seemed he was so determined to carve out a future with me that he was willing to go to any lengths necessary to make it happen. 
    He thought for a moment.  “If you want to keep teaching that could complicate things, but I’ll see what I can do.  You should probably lie low for a couple years so it doesn’t raise suspicion.  But after that, as long as we’re both careful…why can’t we make it work?  Maybe we can get a fake degree made up for you.”
    Looking at him was difficult.  Here was such a gorgeous, charming man with the world at his fingertips…and yet his demons held him back from living a life with any meaning.  I’d recognized early on that he was haunted by something, but I hadn’t expected it to be mental illness.  His apparent delusions made me sad for both of us.
    “I don’t want a fake degree,” I told him.  It wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t the whole truth either.  The fact of the matter was I couldn’t be with someone whose grasp of reality was so tenuous.  If he really thought that people were out to get him and that he was under surveillance, then his issues went deeper than what I’d be able to endure.  It was sad to admit, but I couldn’t help him.
    “But you have a real degree,” he reminded me, still looking hopeful as though I might see reason and agree with him.  “It would just be the piece of paper that’s different, that’s all.”
    “I want the real degree,” I insisted.  “I want the piece of paper that I earned.  I don’t want to hide it away in a drawer somewhere – I want to be able to hang it on my wall and be proud of it.  After all the work that went into getting it, I don’t think that’s asking too much.” 
    That part was actually very much true.  My education was the accomplishment I was most proud of and, while technically a degree was just a piece of paper, to me it symbolized all the sacrifices I’d made to get it.  The idea of purchasing a fake degree, no matter what the reason, just seemed cheap and dirty to me.
    But the notion of getting a phony degree made up wasn’t what was bothering me the most.  It was what I’d planned next that terrified me, for multiple reasons.  I didn’t want to go through with it but I knew I needed to.   I needed to stop trying to put off the inevitable, so I murmured something noncommittal to what Hayden said next and feigned a big yawn as I allowed my eyes to close.
    “I love you,” he murmured.
    Hearing those three words roll off his lips had at one time ignited such passion within me.  I’d been ecstatic to hear him utter that magical phrase.  But now it just hurt.  Part of me wished I could continue to doubt his sincerity, but the horrible truth