behind the camera - fake dating sports romance (wlw)

Chapter Forty-Nine

HARPER

Love is beautiful.

I used to think it wasn't real, not to people like me at least.

I've learned love is not supposed to be loud declarations, showing you off to people, posting everything online, big moments just for attention.

Love is quiet, peaceful, steady. It doesn't need to shout to be real. It just is.

It's the way Millie pulls me in at night without saying a word, like it's the most natural thing in the world. The way her hand always finds mine when we're walking down the street. It's in the way she sees me—not as a mirror to reflect her light, not as an ornament, but as a person. As her person. And I think that's what still gets me sometimes. That she chose me, not for what I could offer or how I looked on her arm, but for my soul.

Months ago, I didn't know if I'd ever believe in this again. My mother was dying. I was coming undone in ways I didn't have words for. The grief was swallowing me whole, and the version of love I'd known before—loud, performative, demanding—had left me raw and cynical. Used. Hurt.

But now, I wake up every morning beside someone who lets me grieve in my own way. Who never tries to fix me, only holds space for me to feel it all. Who listens when I talk about my mom, and who flies with me to Florida just to sit on a quiet beach and let me cry. She walked with me through the house I grew up in, let me show her old pictures of a little girl who didn't know heartbreak yet, who still believed the world was kind. And somehow, with her, I believe in that again.

I used to think love had to be complicated. Chaotic. That if it wasn't all-consuming or dramatic, it wasn't real. But that's what happens when you only know the version of love that burns you. You forget that love can be warm, too. That it can be soft. Safe. Real.

I look over at Millie now. She's lying across the couch, one leg bent beneath her, the other stretched out over my lap. She's wearing a sweater and her hair is still damp from the shower, making the bright red a dark Auburn. She's scrolling through her phone, casually, lazily, her fingers grazing my thigh every time she shifts. And when she looks up at me, her eyes go soft the way they always do when it's just us. Like I'm something she's grateful for. Like I matter.

Love is the way her voice softens when she's with me. It's the way she never looks away when things get hard. It's the way she makes space in her life for me—real space—and lets me do the same for her. It's in our routines now: the shared toothbrush cup, the cereal she keeps just for me, the photos I take of her when she's not looking, and the ones she takes of me when I'm lost in my work.

I spent so long thinking love meant having to earn my worth. That I had to prove I was good enough, pretty enough, useful enough. But with Millie, I never have to prove anything. I just have to be me. And she loves me like that. Exactly like that.

She loves me when my hair's a mess and my socks don't match. She loves me when I wake up grumpy and cling to her like a blanket because the bed feels too cold without her body next to mine. She loves me when I ramble about light theory and aperture at breakfast, eyes wide with wonder over something she doesn't fully understand but listens to anyway, because it matters to me.

She doesn't love a curated version of me. She loves the real thing. The whole thing. The messy and the quiet and the scared and the soft.

This morning, she made coffee before I even rolled out of bed. I came out to find her standing at the counter, barefoot, hair still damp from her shower, wearing that old flannel shirt I stole from her once and never gave back. The sunlight was pouring in through the windows, golden and warm, catching in her hair and painting her in soft morning light. She looked like something out of a dream. My dream.