I stopped walking and turned to face him. His uncanny ability to read my unspoken doubts, shaking me.
“Do you really think that?” I asked, my voice small.
Flynn rubbed his forehead with his hand and looked tired. “I want to be with you forever, Ellie. I only ever feel good when I’m with you. When you left to go to college, I hated it. I was lonely. I wanted you to do go but I didn’t like it.”
“I know,” I said quietly.
“I thought that when you graduated, you’d come back here. I never thought you wouldn’t,” he continued, glaring at the passing cars. He seemed angry.
“But since you’ve come back, things have felt strange. I don’t understand why. You make it so hard to be happy with you when you seem so sad.”
His words echoed those he had spoken to me once years before when I had cut him out of my life for stupid reasons.
You make it so hard to love you!
He had yelled those words and I had hated how true they were. I made it difficult for anyone to care for me. To be close to me.
He was right. Loving me was hard.
“I’m sorry, Flynn,” was all I could say.
Because Iwassorry.
For so many things.
Flynn bit down on his bottom lip, looking oddly conflicted. Then he reached out and took my hand. We walked the rest of the way to his car without saying anything else.
That was the way of Ellie and Flynn.
We spoke more in silence.
It’s where we communicated best.
Chapter Nineteen
-Ellie-
I missed Flynn.
I hated that I missed Flynn.
I shouldn’t miss Flynn.
Not considering that right now I was sitting in my cell in juvenile detention because of him.
It was all his fault.
If he hadn’t made me care about him, I wouldn’t have needed to prove to myself that he didn’t matter.
Sure, I had lit the fire but Flynn had been the match.
I hated him.
I had to. It’s the only way I could survive life without him.
But I missed him too.
I wasn’t strong enough to push him away completely. He had burrowed deep and I wasn’t sure I could ever get him out.
