Misfits Like Us (Like Us #11)(124)

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Anyone who likes her stories is weird too.



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Just disgusting. And she’s a shit writer.



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If you like Luna Hale, unfollow me now.





People are trying to get other people to hate me for something I love doing. Something I love writing. I feel like I’m in a darkened tunnel. No light.

No end.

“It’s not real,” Donnelly tries to soothe me. “It didn’t happen.”

I want to, so badly, hang on to his comforting words and his strong presence. But this crash is burying me, and I’ve lost the ability to pick myself out of the rubble this time.

“It didn’t happen,” I repeat, curling into a ball and hiding my face in my baggy shirt. “It…didn’t happen.” Can I pretend? Please, let me pretend.

I can’t stop trembling. I wasn’t ready for people to see these parts of me. I’m not ready.

I’m not ready.

I’ll never be ready.

Donnelly tightens his arms around my frame. I’m tucked between his legs, and the warmth of him—the notion that he’s here, he’s here, he’s here, and I’m not alone—is the only thing I can focus on that helps me breathe.

He gently pries my phone from my fingers. “I’m switching your Fictitious account to private.”

“Oh—” hiccup “—kay.”

Inhaling hurts.

Exhaling feels impossible.

Pressure on my chest compounds. I tuck my head deeper into my shirt and slip my arms out of the sleeves. Inside my T-shirt tent, I wrap myself into a hug. “It…didn’t…happen,” I whisper to myself.

Silent tears start streaming down my cheeks. My eyes sear, and I squeeze them shut.

The comments flash in my head again. I imagine all of my stories—ones that I never even meant for anyone to know I wrote—being blasted to the mainstream public. To people who don’t even know what Fictitious is. To Celebrity Crush. To morning talk shows.

I’m going to be the butt of a joke.

My stories posted for mockery. Passages will be screenshotted out of context. Used against me. To mock me.

I struggle to breathe because it feels like I’m being eviscerated. Like every nasty thing is compounding. It’ll all catch like wildfire. Hatred.

How do I climb out of it? Everyone will see my writing, eventually. Thousands. Millions will unknowingly bury me with their cruel thoughts.

“It happened,” I say, voice breaking. “It happened…it’s all over.”

I can’t rewind. The internet is forever.

It’ll always exist.

The bed undulates as Donnelly shifts out from behind me. I can’t see him, but I suddenly feel him kneeling in front of me.

He carefully tugs down the collar of my shirt, and my head pops out. Seeing his face, the absolute heartache written across his blue eyes and the determination behind them, to help me—to be here for me—it nearly unravels everything inside my soul.

“Donnelly,” I croak. “It feels like I’m…” Like I’m dying. Like I wish I could die, and I hate this feeling. I hate it so much, but it’s a tidal wave crashing over me. Drowning me into a puddle of nothing, and I don’t want to be nothing. I try to catch staggered breath. I try to hold on to his forearms while he’s cupping my wet, splotchy cheeks and keeping me together. I try to speak. “I don’t want them…to make me feel like this.” I hiccup. “Like I…shouldn’t exist.”

He cradles my gaze. “Don’t let them in.”

“I think it’s too late.” My voice cracks again. “I wish I had the superpower to disappear.”

His chest collapses. “Well then, I wish I had the same power. So I could disappear with you.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“We’d be invisible together. On some invisible planet.”

I cry more, but they’re different kinds of tears as my heart floods.

“And we’d make invisible art together that only invisible people can see.” He searches my gaze like he’s trying to excavate the strength inside of me, to bring the crumbled pieces to the surface. Like he’s trying to help lift me to my feet. “And our invisible love would be stuff of invisible ages.”

“Documented in invisible history books,” I say quietly, shakily.

He nods. “In an invisible library.”

On our invisible planet. Safe from everyone, everything. I can’t control the tears that cascade in hot waves, but I’m trying to breathe without hiccupping. “I’ve erased us?”

“Nah, we’re just disappearing together, and when you’re ready to become visible again, I’ll be there with you, too.”

I bury my forehead into his chest.

He holds on to me.

I pretend I’ve disappeared with Donnelly. We’re gone. Lost in the ether of time and space, and his love for me and my love for him is carrying us through our unraveling universe. Flying past the debris.

We’re flying.

I pretend we’re flying.

And then I think about what I’ve left behind.

My family.