I Could Read Minds But Never His Sincere Love Chapter 06

I Could Read Minds But Never His Sincere Love Chapter 06

Like hell we will.

The plane shuddered as it climbed into the clouds. The last of the sun came through the window and cast a square of light right in front of me.

It was beautiful.

A month into Westbridge, I caved and texted Clara. My phone was still on the message screen when she called.

“Hazel! You’re talking to me again!”

Her voice shook, and then it cracked. “I thought you were done with me for good.”

I smiled. “Clara. Grown woman like you, still crying?”

The first experiment I ever botched, our professor tore into me. Clara just wiped away my tears and smiled.

“Our Hazel. Grown woman like you, still crying?”

She sniffled. Then the words spilled out of her all at once and wouldn’t stop.

“Hazel, where did you go? Are you coming back?”

“Are you okay out there? Thank you for still talking to me.”

“I went by campus last week to see our old advisor. All we talked about was you.”

Then her voice turned cautious.

—

“Hazel, I miss you so much. Miles and I sorted it out, all of it. Do you still hold it against me…”

I let out a breath and found a smile somewhere. “You said you wouldn’t let him come between us. Neither would I. I stopped holding it against you a long time ago.”

I told her everything. We talked until the sky started turning gray with dawn.

Near the end, her tone shifted again.

“Hazel, Miles hasn’t stopped looking for you. Do you… want to know?”

Two weeks had passed, and Hazel hadn’t shown up once.

Nobody was in his way anymore. He should have been thrilled.

Instead, there was a hole in him, like something had been hollowed out and never put back.

He came into Clara’s therapy room the way he always did, holding a bouquet. He was barely in the chair before the question spilled out.

“Do you know what Hazel’s been up to?”

Clara shook her head. He let it go with a sigh, held the flowers out to her, and something in him shifted, turning stiff and formal.

“Clara, I’ve needed to say this for a long time. I have feelings for you.”

Her hands went still. She looked up at him and laughed softly.

“You’re saying that to me with someone else still on your mind? That’s not a good look, is it.”

—

“I don’t…”

The denial was halfway out before something stopped him. He heard it die in his own throat.

“You don’t want me. You want the novelty.”

Her hands went back to her work. She was still smiling, and she took her time.

“You and Hazel grew up together. She’s vibrant and loud and alive, and she’s been in twenty-five years of your life, nearly all of it.”

“You think you want me because nobody so different from her has ever walked into your life before. That’s not love. That’s novelty.”

“If you wanted me the way you’ve convinced yourself you do, you wouldn’t still be flinching away from me in this room.”

“Miles, have you never noticed what we do in here? Every session, we tiptoe right around the things you can’t stand to touch.”

“Hazel, for one.”

It pierced him like a needle finding the one nerve he’d spent years burying.

“You know she can hear your thoughts, don’t you.”

“So every second you’re near her, you’re on guard. You lock yourself away, terrified she’ll catch one stray thought and see all the way through you.”

“That avoidant personality diagnosis gave you an excuse to hide. Fine. But you don’t get to hide there and hurt her with it.”

—

“Actually… neither of us should have hurt her.”