The One Without Words

? chapter thirty-five | birthday stone ?

He frowned. "Es ist ruiniert."

"What is it?"

"I wrote you a letter."

"A letter?"

"About... meine Gefühle."

"Listen, I'd like to learn German sometime for you, especially if it means you'll talk to me more often, but I have no clue what that word means."

"My feelings," he clarified, shyer this time.

And now that letter was nothing but mush.

The guilt came back in the strongest wave yet, crashing into me. He agreed to my stupid plan in the first place so he could give me this. The letter. The necklace.

And I nearly watched him fall to his death.

Talk about heartless.

"How do you not hate me?" I whispered.

"I like you more than I'm mad at you," he said.

Which must've meant... a lot.

A shiver went through me. And not just because of the cold.

"What did you write about in the letter?"

"What I showed you."

"What, with the kiss?"

Silence. His eyes widened; he turned off the flashlight, and I laughed.

"Are you saying that all your wrote in the letter could be summed up with that kiss?" I asked.

"...some of it."

"Only some? Damn, what more do you have to do?"

He let out a small gasp.

It became too much to handle; I couldn't bear another second of this back and forth, and I laughed and threw my arms around him, the force of my body flung against his making him stagger back a bit. He froze, his arms motionless at his side.

You're incredible, I wanted to say, I kind of actually adore you? I wanted to say. I heard his breathy laugh and felt his arms, raising slowly to hug me back.

He held me tighter than I held him. "Danke, Blume girl."

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"I don't think talking is the problem anymore," Jack mused. "I think I've been this way so long I don't know how to be anything else."

"That makes sense," I said, dozing off against the tree trunk, more than happy to listen to his—for once sober—ramblings.

"Everyone wants me to change and... grow out of this. It makes me upset. Because I'd like to get better. But I don't want to have to change for anyone to accept me."

"I do always call you a stubborn brat for a reason," I teased, and my heart jumped to my throat when I felt his lips close to my ear. He whispered something under his breath—probably some insult in German—and I felt my body do this weird jittery thing as I playfully pushed him away.

"Okay, I'll stop flirting now," I said, laughing, and took a moment to collect my thoughts. "So what you're saying is... you want to change, but you're having a hard time letting go of your identity."

He suddenly grabbed my legs and placed them on top of his. "Yes."

"I mean..." Get a hold of yourself, Romy, I thought. "I'm scared. too."

"You are?"

"You think I didn't like the whole sociopath thing? Of course I liked it. Even though my psychologist now says that the others were kind of unprofessional for diagnosing me with that right off the bat. Anyway, it, um, enabled my unhealthy behaviors, according to my psychologist. It was like a shield. But I guess a shield isn't enough."