✨Jess✨ Ann

“Look,” I began, “I get it. You don’t like me, but—”
“I don’t like you?”
He let out a low, flat laugh. One fell into the next, and it was awful—not at all him. He was half
choking on them as he turned around, shaking his head. It almost sounded like a sob, the way his
breath burst out of him.
“I don’t like you,” he repeated, his face bleak. “I don’t like you?”
“Liam—” I started, alarmed.
“I can’t—I can’t think about anything or anyone else,” he whispered. A hand drifted up, dragging
back through his hair. “I can’t think straight when you’re around. I can’t sleep. It feels like I can’t
breathe—I just—”
“Liam, please,” I begged. “You’re tired. You’re barely over being sick. Let’s just… Can we just
go back to the others?”
“I love you.” He turned toward me, that agonized expression still on his face. “I love you every
second of every day, and I don’t understand why, or how to make it stop—”
He looked wild with pain; it pinned me in place, even before what he had said registered in my
mind.
“I know it’s wrong; I know it down to my damn bones. And I feel like I’m sick. I’m trying to be a
good person, but I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Never Fade