“Nightmares. All the things I didn’t say. All the things I thought of to say and didn’t.” Summer closed her eyes. “I hurt him. Over and over. And he just crumples under it.” A few tears seeped out from under her eyelids, and she rubbed at them. “I drove him away.”
He let his head fall back, giving him an upside down view of the landscape behind him. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly after a moment, like he wasn’t quite sure what else to say on the matter. “You didn’t mean to.” Quieter still, that time, as if he was convincing himself just as much as reassuring her.
“That doesn’t make it better.” Even in the light she couldn’t get warm. “I just wanted to … make things better. For you. Him. Us! I thought, if we were friends, even if,” she flushed, “even if, he never loved me back, then it would be better. He would understand. I don’t even know what I did wro—well, okay, burning the door down was a little much.”