Chapter 297
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I wiped at my eyes and felt wetness on my fingers.
I wished I could get a handle on this side of myself. I wished I could be practical. Level-headed. Do what was actually right instead of doing what felt safe in the moment, even when it wasn’t.
But I didn’t know how. And outside of Lucas, I had… no one. I was alone, working without rhyme or reason, with no one to talk to, not really. No one to bounce ideas off of and to give me insight and to just fucking… listen.
Hell, I had even pushed Sarah, my one closest friend, away because of it. And she was the one I wanted to talk to the most. She was calmer than Lucas, more rational, less driven by whatever emotions she felt toward me. I had used her, too, to test that knife, and I didn’t even have the decency to tell her why.
The tears came harder now, slipping down my cheeks and leaving behind salty paths. I pressed my face into my knees and let them fall, too exhausted to fight them back anymore.
I just wished everything could be different.
I wished I’d never died in the first place. I wished I’d never woken up in this timeline with all these memories weighing me down. I wished I could just be normal, live a normal life, without constantly looking over my shoulder for the knife I knew was
coming.
But wishing didn’t change anything.
Just then, I heard footsteps coming toward me.
“Ellie? Is that you?”
Sarah’s voice. Speak of the devil.
I quickly wiped at my face, trying to scrub away the evidence of my breakdown, but it was too late. She had already rounded the corner and was standing there, staring at me with wide eyes.
“Hey,” I said, trying and failing to not sound like I was shattering. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s the library,” she said matter-of-factly. “Are you crying?”
“No.”
She sighed and moved closer. “Ellie, what’s wrong?”
I looked away. “Nothing. Just had a bad day.”
“Um, bullshit. The last time we talked, Dominic took your phone away and hung up on me, and you haven’t even explained what that was all about. Something’s happening between you two, and it’s obviously serious, and if you don’t tell me after everything we’ve been through together, then…” She paused, shut her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. There were tears in them now. “Then we can’t be friends anymore.”
A pang shot through me at her words. I swallowed hard and looked down at my hands.
For a moment, I considered doing what I had been doing all this time: lying, or coming up with an excuse, or using some outside factor as a distraction to get away. I’d done it so many times before that it felt like instinct by now
But I was so tired of lying. Especially to her.
Maybe Colt was right. Maybe I was just as bad as Vivian ar times. But at least I could try to be better. And the first step to being better was to stop keeping everything bottled up inside until it exploded. To stop alienating the people I cared about.
I needed help. I needed my friend. And I didn’t want to lose her.
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“Okay. I’ll tell you,” I said. “But you have to promise me something first.”
“What?”
“You have to promise you won’t think I’m crazy.”
Sarah’s brows lifted. “Huh? Ellie, what are you talking about?”
“Just promise,” I insisted. “Please.”
She hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Okay. I promise.”
I nodded and wiped at my face one more time. Then, I straightened in the chair, dropping my feet to the floor, and took a deep
inhale.
“Sarah,” I said, “you’re going to want to sit down for this.”
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