I know, I know, cliffhangers are the worst! I am sorry, and thank you all so much for you amazing patience 💕 If I could write faster than 4-5k words a week I absolutely would 😭

I hope you like this chapter! Its the real deal 💕

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"I can call you something else?"

"L-like what?"

"What about 'boyfriend'?"

"I -" Damian gulped, suddenly hyper aware of her proximity to him, of his pulse roaring in his ears, of the smell of strawberry and mint, and the way her huge green eyes shimmered up at him. If he reached out, he could touch her so easily, and confirm that he hadn't just imagined the whole thing. "What?"

Instead of speaking, she stepped closer to Damian, and just that simple movement knocked the air from his lungs as a fresh wave of strawberry hit him.

"Is this a joke?" he wheezed. "Are you joking with me right now?"

"Damian," she said again, and this time she said it with more conviction in her voice. "Yesterday, at my house, I kissed you for a reason."

"Why?" said Damian breathlessly.

She met his eyes with a tentative smile. "Because you kiss people you love."

What. He didn't even have the strength to say it out loud. He could only stare at her with his mouth open.

Damian couldn't say a single word. What was happening? He couldn't understand it. The gears inside his brain spun so fast that he couldn't keep up, until they fell off their axles entirely, and he couldn't think anymore. He desperately tried to search for something in his mind to hold on to, but every thought slipped past him like smoke, impossible for him to grab hold of.

Every thought - except for one. The one certainty that he felt, the one constant in his life he had for over twelve years. One thought, above all others, that he knew was the unconquerable truth.

He loved her. He always had.

"Anya," he strained to say her name, and he tried everything possible to get his mind on track. "This isn't funny. You know how I feel about you."

"I know, and I've finally figured it out," she regarded him with an equal measure of seriousness, and Anya steadied her breath, held firm on the ground, and gathered all of the emotions in her, ready to finally give them to him.

"I love you, too!"

He was still not sure he heard her right.

"I love you, Damian."

It could all just be a dream. He would wake up at any second.

"I seriously love you."

Was he on drugs? It could have happened. Someone could have slipped him some sort of hallucinogen at breakfast.

"Damian!" she jolted him out of his thoughts. "I know you can hear me! It's not a dream! And you're not on drugs! This is really real!"

He crashed back into himself, and reality snapped back into place.

"But…" he fumbled for the words, and then realised that nothing could come to mind. "But you're…"

He wanted to say any number of things.

You're crazy. You're Anya. You're unattainable. You're amazing. You're beautiful.

A tiny voice in his mind fluttered with disbelief: You're lying.

"I'm not," said Anya, more forcefully, batting away his anxiety like it was a bug. "I really do love you."

His shock hadn't left him. If anything, his body had started to shut down, and he gaped at her, completely dumbfounded.

"I don't understand."

"How many times are you going to make me say it?" she laughed in weary disbelief, but her laugh quickly vanished when it hit her.

Against the odds, Damian wasn't being an idiot. He was hurt, because she had hurt him, when she left him in the dark. When she didn't give him an answer, even to buy herself time, and she let him think that his love was unrequited, he honestly thought that she had rejected him, that she didn't feel the same, and he was already trying to make peace with that, and move on from the pain of it.

If he was going to accept her confession, she would first have to undo the hurt she caused from before.

With every confession she made to Damian, she had unconsciously moved closer and closer to him, to the point that she had Damian backed up against the pile of mats stacked against the wall. It would be so easy to close the gap, and kiss him, or press her body against his, but she held herself back, barely, only because she knew how important it was for Damian to understand how she felt, before she did anything else.

Anya softened on instinct and reached out to his face, gently caressing his cheek with her hand. He startled at her touch, but he didn't move away. His face was so warm on her palm, and he stared at her with the widest eyes she had ever seen.

"Damian," Anya sighed. "I never rejected you."

She felt, rather than saw, the moment that Damian's breath hitched, when her words started to make an impact, and it gave her the push to keep going.

"I'm sorry that it took me this long to realise it, but the truth is I really, really love you. So much. So much that it scares me, so much that it hurts, but I don't care, because I would rather be abducted again than spend another day holding back how I feel about you!"

She didn't know when she had started crying, only that Damian started to look quite blurry in her eyes, but she didn't care, didn't even bother to wipe away the tears that flooded from her for the second time that day.

Her hand migrated from his face and threaded through his soft hair, and now she was only centimetres away from pressing her entire body against his. Her heart was so full of love for him that she wondered how Damian had lived with his own feelings for so long, how he could have ever functioned at all with a feeling so strong that it could shake the earth.

He stared at her in some mixture of wonder, awe, and, heartbreakingly, a touch of fear, and his uncertainty twisted her heart. He was much more hurt than she had ever realised. It made her want to pull him closer, to embrace him fully, like she was always meant to do.

Anya tentatively stroked her thumb against his cheek and her heart leapt when he subtly leaned into her touch. It was only a fraction, but it was enough. That he looked at her like that, like she was the fuel to his fire, the stars in his sky, she wanted to be all of that for him and more, she wanted to seize a future where they could light up the world - together.

"I love you, Damian."

She would never get tired of saying it.

Damian was speechless. The ability to form coherent words was utterly lost to him, and all protests completely vanished from his mind.

She really was being serious.

"Really?" He croaked, and his voice was hoarse, broken. They were the words he had wanted to hear for so long, dreamed of for nearly his whole life, but now that it was happening, he had no idea what to do with himself, or how to react.

He had been so used to loving her from afar, unreturned, that he had never actually prepared for a scenario that she would really reciprocate his feelings, because deep down, Damian always knew that he didn't deserve to be loved.

Anya's eyes flickered with concern, and she brought up another hand to the side of his face. Damian's chest tightened reflexively, but the doubt still ate at his mind. Why him? Why now? How could he let go of the fear that had choked him for so long?

"I want to show you something," said Anya under her breath, and his heart rate skyrocketed as she brought her face closer to his.

There was no way that he would be able to control himself if she kissed him again, he could only take so much -

But instead, Anya leaned her forehead against his, while her hands cupped the sides of his face, and in an effort not to faint, he held deathly still.

Damian wondered if she wanted him to close his eyes, or do something, when he heard her taking a deep breath, but then an image flashed in his vision, and not for the first time that day, he suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe.

He could see… Becky? Along with the other Cecile girls all laughing with each other, but then the perspective of the vision shifted, and he saw himself, across the field, along with Emile and Ewen, and his mind whirred in confusion.

Was Anya… showing him one of her memories?

He couldn't describe how strange it was to look at an image of himself, and see himself as she must have been looking at him, with a soft and shiny quality to it that he recognised all too well, and Damian's heart stuttered at the sight of it.

Voices rippled out to him from the vision:

"I'm in love with him."

"He thinks I rejected him!"

"I have to go tell him!"

It was one thing for Anya to try to show him the sight and the sounds of the memory, but what she felt during it was overwhelming. Anya's emotions rolled through him like the oncoming clouds of a wild thunderstorm; he felt the tightening of her chest as she looked at him, he felt her racing heart as she caught his eye, and her overwhelming desire to rush over to him, the surge of affection and love directed towards him, and for a moment he was back to floating in space, where her love burned like the sun, illuminating everything in its path. Love blazed through her, and therefore through him, and for that moment where she shared her mind and her heart with him, Damian could not tell where her love ended and his began.

Anya pulled back from him, released her hold from his face, and she shyly held her hands behind her back.

Damian's breath suddenly rushed back into him, and he clutched at the fabric of his gym uniform as he gasped for breath.

"Do you believe me now?" she said softly.

The confusion and shock must have shown on his face, because Anya lowered her voice and spoke once more. "I'm sorry if that was too much. I wasn't sure if it would work…"

Damian had never felt so light. Exhilaration rushed through him, and the wall that he had been building around his heart for his entire life slowly crumbled to dust, as he finally accepted her words. The pain in his chest tightened in a final wave before dissipating entirely, and the only thing that was left was his heart, renewed and whole, and unconditionally hers.

She loved him back. She loved him back. Tears pricked at his eyes and slid down his face, in frustration, joy, confusion, but most of all relief. This whole time, she hadn't rejected him after all, and she wanted to be his girlfriend? Unreal. Unbelievable.

Everything rose in him then; how he had held on to his love for her for years, watching it grow beyond his control, despite his protests, to the point that he couldn't imagine his life without her, and just that thought sent his mind spiralling.

It was too much. Even standing was too hard as his legs shook, and when the backs of Damian's calves hit the pile of mats, he buckled, and landed in a daze with a soft thump.

Anya was instantly worried. "Are you okay? Did I do something bad? Was it too much? Did I hurt -"

Without thinking, Damian grabbed her hand, and tugged her gently towards him. At his touch, she stopped worrying out loud, and she felt his intentions calling out to her.

Come here.

He moved back towards the wall, while Anya cautiously climbed onto the mat, following his lead. For that moment, the only sound in the air was the gentle rustle of moving fabric as she slid closer to him, and the subtle sighs of their breaths, so full of relief that the only thing left was to savour the feel of each other, as if it would fill them with all the love they had been missing for an entire lifetime, and then some. Anya rested her palm against his chest as he encircled his arms around her, and the sound of his steady heartbeat reverberated in the space between them.

Damian clutched her closer to him, closer, and in a wave of emotion that overwhelmed him, he pressed his face into her neck, inhaling strawberry and mint, and despite the hot tears that wouldn't stop, he couldn't help but laugh - weary, relieved, thankful, contented, all at once.

She loved him back.

"Thank you for showing me," he murmured in a low voice, and he knew that nothing would ever compare to this feeling, of loving, and being loved in return.

A final shuddering sigh, and the tension trapped inside him finally drained away, and he was left tired, but relaxed, and with the uncontainable joy of having the love of his life wrapped firmly in his unwavering arms.

"I believe you."