Lovers Like Us (Like Us #2)(114)

My eyes burn and stomach knots. “Charlie—”

“No,” he cuts me off again. “I don’t want to morph into someone else. I want to be me, whoever that person is, he’s not like you or anyone else, and I’m fighting to find him. You make that impossible sometimes.”

A rock lodges in my throat, an apology sitting on the edge of my tongue.

Charlie flips his phone in his hand. “And I’m not even blaming you. I needed to deal with these feelings, but I couldn’t be your sidekick or live in your shadow.”

Realization gradually sinks in. “Harvard…”

He takes a tight breath. “That night on the yacht, I decided right then that to escape your soul-sucking shadow, I’d have to escape you. No Harvard. No answering your calls or texts. You be you, and I…try to rediscover who I am.” His voice cracks.

He almost always lets me see his emotion. You think he’s brick-walled, but he’s not like his dad. He doesn’t contain a thing.

I thought ditching on Harvard was premeditated, but he said he decided to bail right then. In the moment.

I swallow, my heart beating fast. I want to reach out, but how do you extend a hand when you’re the cause of someone’s pain? “I can move out of the way for you,” I say. “I’ll try—”

“No. This is why I didn’t tell you back then. You can’t fix it, Moffy. Because I don’t want my siblings to lose you, and I don’t want to be you. There’s nothing you can do, and look at your face. I know it hurts…”

My chest constricts like I’m stuck beneath salt water and I can’t find the surface. My eyes try to well, and I tilt my head back against the chair. Bottling my emotion, face stoic. “Do you?” I ask since he’s always lacked a certain amount of empathy for other people.

“I can see that it hurts you,” he tells me. “You know, I used to believe that we were just meant to be opposites. That for all the compassion you had, I lacked. For all the responsibility Maximoff Hale acquired, I was left with none. And in everyone’s eyes, you were the hero, and I’d become the villain.” A tear rolls slowly down his cheek, dripping off his jaw.

It almost crushes my chest. “You’re not the villain to anyone,” I tell him strongly. “If anything, you’re the anti-hero. And people usually love those more.”

Charlie rubs another fallen tear. “I don’t need anyone to love me. I can deal with hate.”

I nod, just listening.

“But when everyone fawns over you and acts like you’re indestructible, it’s grating,” Charlie says. “I can’t bite my tongue, and my gut reaction is to go for your jugular.”

“I’m not any better,” I admit.

Charlie shrugs, and silence hangs but not as heavily as it could.

I want to stand. I want to do something more for him, but he keeps looking at me like, this is it. This is the end with no solution that I’ve asked to meet.

I drop my head, thinking. And thinking. “So are you saying I’ll always make you feel like shit?” It kills me knowing that I’ve hurt him for so many years.

And that I’ll just continue being a negative impact on his life.

“I can’t see the future,” Charlie says. “I’m not six-feet-three inches full of resentment anymore. I’m not sixteen. But it’s still tough being around you. Where everyone praises you. Where I’m stuck in a shadowed place and I’m neither lost nor found. Doing my own thing makes me feel…”

“Free,” I finish.

He nods. “Like my identity is mine. Not an extension of you or my dad.”

I understand the shackles of our parent’s past, but I had no idea I’d been shackling Charlie. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“I knew you’d care, but I also knew it wouldn’t change anything.”

“Right,” I mutter. I’m just supposed to…deal. I’m not sure the hurt will disappear that easily, but the truth is better than the unknown. I can finally see the kind of terrain I’m standing on. In case you were wondering, the ground is littered with rocks.

I just wish they were the kind we could shave down or move together.

“I think about something a lot,” I tell him. “How our dads are best friends. Our moms are sisters. In some cosmic way, I think you and I were fated to be rivals or friends.” I lick my dry lips. “I guess friends isn’t in the fucking cards for us, huh?” And I have to accept this.

“Non, il te suffit de m’attendre,” Charlie says in a perfect French lilt. No, you just need to wait for me.

“De quelle manière?” I breathe. In what way?

“To be strong enough to be near you and not hate everything about you and me.”

I’m fucking terrible at waiting around. Doing nothing. He knows this. You know this. But for Charlie, I’d try. If he needs me to be patient, I’ll do that a million times over.

I nod strongly. “Okay.”

We seem to breathe at the same time, and I try to relax and adjust the air conditioner.

Charlie reaches forward and steals my philosophy book. He slings his legs sideways across the seat and flips through the pages. When our gazes briefly meet, he says, “Merci pour le matériel de lecture.” Thanks for the reading material.