[ Ruby ]
It's the looking for the gain that's possibly tripping you up. Humans can be very goal focused, certainly, and some of them can be as evil and horrible as anything without a soul - see: Wolfram & Hart - but the why of most of the things we do is pretty simple. To be happy, to love, to be needed. Again, for as selfless as we can be, most of our greatest desires are based in selfishness. Very rarely do people, say, want to make others happy without also wanting happiness of their own.
How they hate you, as in, what the combination of their feelings are?
Because he clearly and openly cared about you and I have some reason to believe he hasn't been able to stop. He used to have a picture with you in it on his bulletin board at school. When whatever that happened between you happened, before everyone found out what was going on, he very angrily cut you out of the Christmas photo. Recently, the piece he'd hacked out appeared again, taped back in, but the patched part was covered by the corner of another image. Sometimes, I see him looking at that board when he thinks no one is watching.
Which, all that was to say, there's a difference between thinking something wasn't real and truly believing deep down that it wasn't. Humans are very good at making themselves think the least true thing for a number of reasons.
And if I didn't want to talk to you, I'd be focused on paperwork or something else. You're, though it might sound rather insulting, something of a curiosity to me and I don't really know when to walk away from those. Plus, I think you sincerely mean some of the things you say now, so consider me being an ear to listen to being part me, part being on Team Good Guy.
So you enjoyed the lie, the way it felt and what it allowed you to have and do. But now, what do you value more, how you felt and what you had, the lie, or the things you weren't supposed to have but did get?