Page 55 of Bullied Pretend Mate
At first, the name Tarastands out to me because I have no idea who she’s talking about. But I move past it quickly, shaking my head. “I mean, I know Holden was hard on you after the fire, but—”
“No.” She crosses her arms. “Not after the fire. Before.”
I stare at her, and she lets out a bitter laugh, drawing the backs of her hands over her cheeks to wipe away the tear tracks.
“Youmade my life miserable, Felix.”
“What?” I’m really confused now, trying to take another step toward her, but she holds her hand up. “We didn’t even talk in high school.”
“Which you madesureof,” she snaps, frowning at me. “The second we got to high school and you realized you had a place among the popular crowd, youdroppedme. You were my best friend, and then one day, you realized I wasn’t good enough for you.”
I think about the pressure from my parents. The constant reminders that this was the time to surround myself with the right people. And Maeve was, even if it was never explicitly stated, not one of the “right” people.
So I did what they wanted me to. Surrounded myself with the right friends—Xeran, Lachlan. Even Soren, who came from a shitty family, but on the merit of being best friends with Xeran, he’d earned a spot in our friend group.
“I…” Memories are flooding back to me, coupled with shame. Guilt. Talking about Maeve behind her back to the others. Making sure they weren’t onto me, didn’t realize that I had a crush on her.
That my eyes followed her everywhere she went. That, sometimes, all I wanted was to go and sit athertable. Becauseshe knew me. Because we were into the same nerdy shows, stuff Xeran and Lachlan didn’t care about.
“You made high schoolawfulfor me,” Maeve says, choking through her sobs, and I feel my insides start to shudder at the sight of her like this, falling apart.
Falling apart, because ofme.
“I…” I try again, but I don’t know what to say. What is there to say?
It’s dawning on me that all this time, Maeve has seen me as her high school bully. And that’s what I was.
I never did it to her face, never said mean things directly to her. And I thought that made it okay. But the things I whispered about, justifying them because I thought it was keeping me safe? Those got back to her.
When I followed my parents’ orders and gave up my friendship with her, I was only ever thinking about the way that mademefeel. Not her.
Which explains the way she looked at me that first day. The reason she felt so uncomfortable in that elevator was with me. Why she laughed at the idea of us keeping up a fake relationship.
For more than ten years, when Maeve thought about me, she saw me as her bully. As the guy making things hard for her.
And I’d always thought of her as the one that got away.
Other than the fire, high school was a breeze for me. I had a good position at the top, and I spent more time and energy protecting that than ever trying to make things better for her. As the memories blink through my head, I realize that wasallof us. Too afraid to like who we liked, so concerned with what our parents thought of us.
I think about Xeran and Phina. He publicly rejected her because of the social pressures, which made him miss the first ten years of his daughter’s life. Lachlan pushed Valerie away, too, and almost lost her last year because of it.
And here I am, realizing I’m not an outlier. That I’m exactly like them, having lost something.
Except there’s one difference. At least they were smart enough to realize what they were doing. At least theyknewthey were hurting the people they loved.
I stomped around and hurt Maeve without ever realizing that’s what I was doing.
“Maeve,” I try again, voice breaking, the crushing reality of how much I hurt her making it hard to think. “I—”
She’s hurting—she hasbeenhurting—and I’m the one who caused it. For second, it’s overwhelming, making it impossible for me to find a way out.
But I have to. I’m in love with her, and there has to be a way I can fix this, a way I can make things up to her. An apology that won’t try to explain my way out of it, but show how much I regret being the one to hurt her.
How I’ve changed.
How I feel about her now.
I’ll spend the rest of my life making her happy if it means she’ll agree to stay here in Silverville with me. If it meant she could ever possibly forgive me for the pain I caused her back then.
