Page 137 of Come Break My Heart Again

Elle thinking she never mattered to me isn’t one of the things I can handle. Maybe she needs to read this—the explanation I never sent her—to move on. To shut that chapter—my chapter—of her life. Solve the mystery of our past.

I stand, the letter in my hand, and head back to the kitchen. My mom is sitting at the kitchen table, flipping through the mail delivered earlier.

I toss the envelope down next to the stack of bills and flyers.

“What’s that?” my mom asks.

I don’t buy her nonchalance.Elleis all that’s written on the outside. I didn’t know where to send it—what college she ended up at. I’m sure her parents would have burned it if I sent it to her house.

“Can you give that to her on Thursday?” I walk toward the door. “Thanks. I’ll be home for dinner.”

If my mom says anything else, it’s lost in the close of the hinges behind me.

26

My mom frowns when I walk into the kitchen on Monday morning. I’m not even having to fake the uncomfortable look on my face. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t feel well,” I tell her.

It’s not a lie. I barely slept last night, stressed about today. Ever since Phoenix walked away on Saturday night, I’ve tried to come up with some way to get out of this. Mostly because I resent the hell out of him and Cruz for using me like some sort of lackey because of something that had nothing to do with them. I showed up for Cormac. Punched Hathaway for Elle.

“You too sick for school?” my mom asks.

“Yeah.” I fake a cough. “Already texted Tuck and told him not to pick me up.”

“Do you need me to stay home?”

“No.” I say it too quickly, and she frowns again. “I mean, no thanks. I’ll be fine.”

I grab a glass out of the cabinet and fill it with water.

“I’m going back to bed.”

“Okay,” she calls after me. “Text me if you need me to come home.”

“I will. Thanks, Mom.”

I exhale a long breath once I’m back in my room, then check my phone for texts. I have two new messages.

TUCKER: That sucks, man. Feel better.

PHOENIX: Ten a.m.

I down the water and then flop on my bed.

Nothing from Elle, which piles on to the stress I’m already experiencing. Everything her dad and Archer and Cruz said about us yesterday has wiggled its way into my brain. Stuff I already knew, yet sounds different spoken aloud.

We haven’t even discussed if we’re actually dating. In some ways, our relationship feels so much maturer than it did freshman year. In others, it’s just as juvenile. We fool around and we flirt.

I love her. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.

But my mom loved my dad, and that didn’t get her anywhere.

Elle’s going to college. She toured Dartmouth yesterday, a school I have no chance of going to. It’s about two hours from here, which isn’t terrible if I ever get my car running. But will Elle want me visiting when she’s off living a new life? If I asked her now, I know she’d say yes. But that’s different from the reality of her going places and me going nowhere. If I leave Fernwood after graduation for a fresh start somewhere else, I’d be abandoning one of the few things we have in common.

“You’re a fucking game to her, you know.”

Hathaway’s toxic words circle my head.

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