Page 173 of Lovers Like Us

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

“Then explain it to me,” Iplead.

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. “Ihatewhat 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 beneathyours.”

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

But I don’t knowhow.

I inhale a sharp breath. “What is itlike?”

Charlie shifts in hisseat.

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 disableit.

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 isyou.”

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 nextone.

“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 withgirls.”

“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 footrope.”

His eyes are bloodshot, and he says, “It’s all these little moments that have made you. You meaneverythingto 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 beanythingto 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,morebitter—a guy who wakes up and hates himself for not being more like MaximoffHale.”

What…

“You’re not self-loathing,” Iargue.

At least, that’s what I’veseen.

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 becomeyou.”

I never knewthis.

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 besomeoneorsomethingto the people I love. Then maybe they’d need me like they needyou.”

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 beme, whoever that person is, he’s not like you or anyone else, and I’m fighting to find him. You make that impossiblesometimes.”

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

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 yourshadow.”

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 voicecracks.

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 athing.

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

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’lltry—”