AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The way he says it…like being loved by me is something special. Something to be coveted.
When all I’ve done is drag him down with me in my misery…for years…
“And you’d get to…I don’t know, take all those feelings left behind from my sister, and give them somewhere to go.”
Jesus.
“Jeremy.” I shake my head. This time I don’t let him silence me. “I wouldn’t…That’s not… Fuck, I’d never use you as some kind of…stand-in for her.”
He can’t seriously think that…
“Never,” I vow fiercely.
And yet by his expression, it’s exactly what he thinks. What he believes, and?—
Fuck, I hate this.
He really can’t see it.
He won’t let himself.
He’s…protecting himself.
From me.
He smiles, and it’s a sad, hopeless, yet knowing thing. “You wouldn’t mean to. I know you’d never hurt me like that intentionally,” he says gently.
Sniffing, I say, “No. I wouldn’t.”
“Which is exactly why we can never go down this path. Because, like I said, it’d feel good for a while, so long as we continue to lie to ourselves, pretending it’s something more. But eventually…” He lifts a shoulder, letting his words trail off, the implication settling heavily over us.
I swallow tight, unsure what to even say to that.
I wish I could tell him he’s wrong, but I just…I don’t know. I can’t predict the future. I can’t promise that what I’ve been feeling these last few months—hell, years—is nothing more than exactly what he thinks it is. I wish I could, but if there’s anything I learned these last couple years, it’s that…
I’m an addict.
I’ve got the mind of an addict.
I’m driven by impulse, and this constant chase for moremoremore.
Be it drugs. Be it music. Be it clinging to every fucking person I care about, because I don’t know how to function without giving my entire being to something—someone…
Just like with Izzy as kids.
Sure we were young. Who’s to say we would’ve worked out?
But I loved her as fiercely as I was capable of back then. Gave my entire heart to her, and vowed forever the second she demanded it. With barely even a second thought. And why? For what purpose other than to?—
Be reassured.
“Fuck,” I murmur. I screw my eyes shut, and pinch the corners of my eyes as my sessions with Cleo back in rehab, run through my head. What I said, what she implied…
Overcompensated.
And suddenly I’m no longer standing in a cemetery, or even in my therapist’s office. But instead I’m lying in my childhood bed, with Mom wrapped around me, staring up at my Avengers poster, “You Get What You Give” by The New Radicals playing through my headphones.
I’ll be good.
