Page 101 of I'm Gonna Get You Back
I grimace. “Not on purpose. Am I?”
He holds up his forefinger and thumb an inch apart. “Little bit.”
I put my hands up. “Sorry—I know he broke your heart.”
Mitchell winces at that, but I keep going.
“I’d just hate for you to miss out on something good because you think the way he acted was aboutyou. It wasn’t. You should talk to Kenji. Tell him how you feel.”
Mitchell bursts into a laugh that takes over his whole body.
“What? Why is that so funny?”
It takes him a few seconds to answer. “It’s not—it’s good advice. I just wishyouwould take it, since you’re obviously in love with Reid.” He says it like a joke, but as our gazes meet, whatever he sees in my eyes makes his go round with surprise. “Holy shit. You are. You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
I stare down at my hands, my face instantly flaming. “Don’t tell him,” I say in a rush.
“What?”
“He’s got enough going on right now—”
“No way.” Mitchell leaps to his feet, suddenly agitated. “You can’t do this to him again. Clara, what you did? That shitbrokehim last year.”
My pulse begins racing so hard I feel it in my fingertips.
It’s been an unspoken rule that Mitchell and I don’t talk about Reid forthisreason. He’s spared sharing the things that would burrow deep.
But now that we’ve torn open the subject, Mitchell no longer holds back what he’s clearly kept in all year. “What happened at the assembly was so fucked up. I know that. My skin crawls any time I think about it. But it wasn’t Reid’s fault.”
“That’s not why… I wasn’t about to ruin his time at college, Mitchell. A long-distance relationship would’ve made him unfocused, and he would’ve ended up hating me for holding him back. I had to let him—” My voice breaks and I stop.
Mitchell’s eyes widen, and he puts a hand over his heart like he’s touched. “Oh my god, youWhite Fanged him. Or, like, the butterfly thing. Loving so much you let him go.”
I nod. “He even tried to give me his Legacy spot, did you know that?”
Mitchell goes still. “Yeah, I did know that.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“He told me not to.”
“See? This isexactlywhy I had to break things off. It makes no sense that he would give up something like that for me.”
Mitchell frowns. “Actually it makes perfect sense. Hebelieves in you. It wasn’t because of his feelings for you. I mean, okay, it wasn’tjustbecause of that. You got cheated out of a chance you deserved, and he was just trying to make it right. He was trying to”—his shoulders sag—“he wastrying, Clara.”
Tears heat the backs of my eyes.
Reid always tries so hard. Too hard. It’s what’s breaking him now and what was always difficult to keep up with then. But hearing Mitchell say it like this, I’m starting to wonder if Reid tried that hard for me because… I didn’t try enough.
“Did I give up too easily?” I ask.
Mitchell shrugs. “That’s probably being too hard on yourself. But you did pivot to tree person, and that was a dark timeline for you, I’m not gonna lie.”
I kick him, and he laughs.
But he’s also not wrong.
When that video played at the assembly, it silenced something in me. No matter my love for Reid, I couldn’t stand the idea of him being withthatgirl. The one who was messy and broken and stuck.
