Lovers Like Us (Like Us #2)(113)

“You don’t have to do this,” Charlie says, and he messes his already messy hair.

My palms sweat on my paperback. “Do what?”

“Bring up high school. The good ol’ times.” Charlie holds my gaze. “I realize there was a time when we were friends.”

“Yeah?” I tuck my paperback in the seat. “I remember us being close until that summer bash on the yacht. You know Harvard?” I inch towards the question. The one that I’ve never edged near. My tongue feels thick in my mouth. “You never really told me why you didn’t want to go.” I stop myself for a second.

I’m afraid.

And I don’t know what worries me. The actual answer or the aftermath of knowing it. My heart practically bangs against my ribcage.

I find some fucking words. “What changed?”

“Me,” he says without pause or extra thought.

My brows knit together and shock engulfs me. I’d always thought he’d blame me. “What do you mean?”

Charlie winces and sits up a bit more. Not slouching like usual. “You really want to talk about this? We’re on our way to deal with a manipulative motherfucker, who could be a narcissist or a sociopath, and if things don’t end well between you and me, we’ll be walking in with welts and bloody noses.”

I’d rather take the chance to do more damage than never try to repair what we broke. The hardest part was opening this door.

I’m not shutting it now.

“I don’t plan on punching you,” I tell him, “so that’s not going to happen.”

The corner of his mouth rises. “I never plan on hitting you either, but it still happens. You have a punchable face.”

“Thank you,” I say dryly.

His smile lifts more, but then morphs into a bitter cringe. “I wasn’t lying that day on the dock. When I said I couldn’t stand being around you, I meant it.”

A knife slowly sinks into my gut, but I listen. I wait. I don’t lash out. “Yeah?” I lick my lips, trying to form the right words. “So you bailed on Harvard because you didn’t want to be around me. That’s it?”

He lets out an exasperated breath. “You make it sound so simple. But it’s not like that to me.”

“Then explain it to me,” I plead.

He leans forward in his chair and then back, and I think he’s about to brush me off. But then he starts talking. Eyes on me. Not breaking. “I hate what I feel when I’m near you sometimes. I hate who I become.” Charlie rubs his mouth, then sits forward again. “We’re both living beneath the shadows of our fathers, but just imagine, for a second, what it’s like to live beneath yours.”

I go cold. It can’t be easy for him. I get that, and I want to help make it better.

But I don’t know how.

I inhale a sharp breath. “What is it like?”

Charlie shifts in his seat.

The topic is uncomfortable. The air is tight, and we’re passing a bomb back and forth. But for the first time, I feel like we have the tools to disable it.

He looks me right in the eye. “Fourth of July five years ago, my little sister burns her arm on a sparkler. She doesn’t go to my parents. Doesn’t even search for Jane. The first person she turns to is you.”

I want to cut in, to tell him that I was probably just near her in proximity, but he’s quickly spouting off to the next one.

“Halloween two years ago, Eliot crushes on the girl in that old local, corner bookstore. But I don’t learn this from him. My little brother chose to ask you for advice about approaching her, even though you and I both have the same amount of experience with girls.”

“Charlie—”

“Seven years ago,” he says, still going. “Winona falls into the creek behind the lake house, and she starts sinking in that quicksand mud. I’m halfway to her. Already ankle-deep in water, but you come out of God-knows where with your shining white armor and ten foot rope.”

His eyes are bloodshot, and he says, “It’s all these little moments that have made you. You mean everything to my siblings. To the Meadows girls, to your sisters and brother, and that makes you a shadow I can’t escape. Because I can’t be anything to them when you’re every fucking thing. So who am I?” Charlie points at his chest. “Who am I? And what the hell do I become if I go to Harvard with you? Lost and confused? I was already self-loathing and bitter, but I’d just be more resentful, more bitter—a guy who wakes up and hates himself for not being more like Maximoff Hale.”

What…

“You’re not self-loathing,” I argue.

At least, that’s what I’ve seen.

He tilts his head. “I don’t always lash out at you because I hate you. I lash out because I hate how I feel when I’m around you. I hate that I want to become you.”

I never knew this.

I never saw this or understood this. I think about everything all the goddamn time, but I never even fathomed that someone like Charlie, a Cobalt, could be less than confident, less than colossally self-assured.

Charlie shakes his head. “I’m not a natural born leader. I don’t want to be one, but sometimes it feels like that’s my only path to be someone or something to the people I love. Then maybe they’d need me like they need you.”