it.” His voice breaks as he speaks, and I can tell how hard this is for him and how much he’s pushing himself to say the things he’s saying. He said that he couldn’t verbalize it, but he is. Here. Now. With me. He’s doing it. And so, I do what he once did when I cried to him about my mother not wanting me. I take his hand, and I hold it, and I don’t let go.
Fingers linked, he grabs on to me, as if I’m his lifeline. His anchor. Once upon a time, I felt the same about him.
I say, my voice low, tentative, “Hatred is a one-way emotion.” I take a breath. “It only affects the person holding on to that hate. Take Laney’s ex, for example…” I face him, but he’s already watching me. “Do you think he knows how much you hate him? Do you think he cares that you do?”
Leo chews the corner of his lip as his eyes search mine.
“Does he even know you exist?”
His lashes lower.
“So, what’s the point, right?” I murmur. “Only you carry the burden of hatred, Leo. And it’s a lot easier to let go of that pain than it is to hold on to it.”
He nods as if he understands, but I can tell that there’s something more on his mind. Something heavier. When he lifts his gaze, his stare is blank, eyes clouded. “What if…” he trails off, and I find myself moving closer to him.
“What if what?” I urge.
He looks away again, mumbling, “What if the person I hate most is myself?”
Air jolts against my ribcage, gets caught in my throat. It takes everything inside me to open my airways, breathe his words right into me. “You don’t hate yourself, Leo Preston,” I choke out. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t be here.”
Trust me, I want to tell him. I’d know.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Leo
There’s a young couple in the diner with me, and they’re talking to each other, but not really. They’re doing that thing where one person talks and the other person hears them, but they don’t really listen. They’re too busy trying to come up with what to say when the other finishes speaking because silence would be too awkward, and that would be too hard.
Personally, I like the silence in between. Those few seconds or even minutes where you kind of wrap your mind around everything that’s just been said. Talking for the sake of talking is pointless to me—kind of like hearing but not listening. When I do talk, I like to ask questions. And when people answer, I consider it a gift.
Miss Sandra appears beside my booth and practically drops my order on the table. “You going to try to kill him, too?”
I internally groan, my face scrunched in that silently apologetic way when I look up at her. I don’t actually verbalize an “I’m sorry” because that would be a lie, and I don’t want to lie to Miss Sandra.
She tilts her head to the side and offers an assessing “Hmm” at my non-response, and then, as surreptitiously as she arrived, she’s gone again.
No longer interested in the fake couple, I pick up Lucy’s book sitting on the bench beside me, and just because I kind of miss her, I crack the spine and send a picture to her.
Lucy: I hate you.
Leo: You’re welcome.
Lucy: How are you?
How am I?
I shouldn’t have started the conversation because now she’s waiting for a response and I don’t know what to say. I’m average, wouldn’t suffice. But I’m not good, and I’m not bad, either. I am, however… lighter than I was yesterday, far less burdened with the weight of Hate.
I guess I never looked at it the way Mia described. To me, hate was always just an emotion, something I couldn’t control. It was a four-letter word that I’d scrawled on the backs of many, many photographs.
I respond to Lucy, mainly to ease her worries.
Leo: I’m better.
Lucy: I’m glad, Leelee.
I crack a smile at Lucy’s pet name for me. When we were kids, she deemed that she hated the “O” part of my name and started calling me Lee, which then turned to Leelee. I was a toddler and didn’t understand why she was suddenly changing my name, but I thought it was a game and so she became Lulu. Together, we were LuLee. And we were together a lot, come to think of it. She even put our joined names on a sign that