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I huffed out a breath and spun around on the ball of my foot, turning my back on him. Did he eventhinkbefore he said things? I growled—whined. A sound that was both but neither of them at all.
“—but I do,” he finished.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I pressed the heel of my palms into them and let out a frustrated growl. “Then where does that leave us, Neil?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and his words sounded as broken as I felt. “I don’t know,” he repeated for a second time, his fingers wrapping around my elbow and slowly shifting me back around to face him. “But I miss you.”
I could see in his eyes how serious he was, how much he meant what he said. But it didn’t matter. Like a switch being flicked in my brain, my emotions sprinted from one end of the spectrum to the other, rolling from a disrupting, painful ache to a simmering anger.
Just like that.
I pulled out of his grasp, my jaw clenching tight. “No.” I shook my head. “You don’t get tosaythat when you don’t know what the hell you want!” My voice cracked, and I wanted to scream; I wanted to scream until it scratched my throat raw. And the resulting look of bewilderment on his face, that little crease of confusion between his brows, only made me angrier.
Didn’t he get it?
I was the one who stepped closer this time. “I gave you your space, yourbreak.And while I don’t think I’ve stopped thinking about you for one goddamn second, here you are.On a date!” I yelled the last sentence through my teeth, my eyes still burning. I was pretty sure the girl inside the coffee shop was gawking at us through the window now, but full honesty, I didn’t give two flying fucks. I threw my hands up in the air. “Do you have any idea how much that sucks?” I raged on.
He took a deep breath, releasing it on a sigh. “I told you, Liv, it’s not—”
“I don’t care! That’s what itfeelslike.” I shoved my hand against my chest, swallowing back againsteverything.
I felt crazy. My insides going batshit. Hurt being washed out by anger, being washed out by hurt, being washed out by anger, like a freaking riptide. My heart was beating so fast I was sure it was going to stop dead in my chest, and my thoughts were running around in a hundred different directions. And my emotions… the hurt and anger, stacked on top of frustration, stacked on top of what felt like was breaking inside me and a kaleidoscope of too many other disconcerting things, was too much.
I had the sobering thought that Linda was right, and feelings ruined everything.
It wasn’t worth this. Wasn’t worth feeling this confused and crushed and just…awful.
No, I just wanted to get the hell out of here. I turned and stepped off the curb, but Neil’s hand tightened around my arm.
“Wait,” he said. “Please don’t leave like this. I want to talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Olivia,”he pleaded. “Please. I don’t want you to walk away thinking I don’t care, because I do.”
I turned back around in his hold, my gaze meeting his. And in that quick second, I wanted to break. His fingers grasping on to me, his eyes pleading with mine, itfeltlike I was breaking. “Well, you have a pretty shitty way of showing it,” I said quietly.
I watched him visibly deflate. “It’s not so easy for me, you know… with my parents, and my faith,” he responded, equally as quiet. “I know what I want, but my mind screams something else, and my parents—”
I scoffed. “Grow a pair, Neil. You think this is easy for me? You think my mom hasn’t screwed up my way of thinking, too? It’s probably theentirereason I pushed you away to begin with.” I took in an unsteady breath and blew it out. “But it didn’t take me long to realize that I don’t have to be the person she’s tried to make me be. I don’t have to share her twisted point of view just because she wants me to.”
I pointed at the window. “That’swho you think you should be—who your parents want you to be. But I see who you are. Who you really are.” The thickness in my throat, the tightening in my chest, the wave of pressure behind my eyelids… I swallowed them all back with far too much effort. “I just wish you did, too. Because you can be really fucking cool when you’re not so concerned with all of that.
“Ilikethat Neil. God and Bible included.” It was more honest than I wanted to be, but it was what it was.
I liked the Neil who watched horror movies with me until three in the morning and still woke up in time for church on Sundays. The guy who read the Bible front to back but still believed his cousin should be able to love who he wanted to love and not be condemned for it. The one who laughed at my crude jokes and smirked in that way too attractive way when he was amused and who liked me for who I was—curse words and dark personality and smartass included.
The Neil that kissed me the way he kissed me but still held tight to his morals, too.
Thatwas the Neil I fell in love with.
And sure, the realization hit me like a physical blow, but it wasn’t the first time I’d thought the words, or even feltthem. I could easily acknowledge that. It was the first time I was admitting it to myself, though—looking at him now, all these feelings twisted up inside me.
I was definitely, one-hundred percent in love with Neil Summers.
It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, finally giving it space to breathe in my mind; it didn’t make sense to feel broken when you admitted something like that to yourself for the first time.
But here I was.