They Said She Was Strong So They Never Had To Choose Her Chapter 06
The next afternoon, I found Julian waiting downstairs at my dorm.
He looked like he hadn’t slept all night. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and his shirt was badly wrinkled.
In eighteen years, I had never seen him look this rough.
He walked over quickly and reached for my backpack.
I stepped to the side.
His hand froze in the air, and something painful flickered across his face.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“Didn’t hear it.”
“And the text?”
“I saw it.”
He stared at me, like he couldn’t understand why, knowing he was coming, I hadn’t gone to the airport to pick him up.
In the past, whenever any of the three of them was traveling, I had always looked up their flight information ahead of time.
I would wait at arrivals with a bottle of water and a jacket.
Julian used to laugh and say that seeing me was how he knew he was home.
Now, he had stood alone at a strange airport for a long time, and I hadn’t come.
“It was my first time here. I didn’t know the way.”
“Your phone has a map on it.”
My voice stayed level.
But his eyes reddened at the words.
“Chloe Sinclair, do you really have to talk to me like this?”
“How am I supposed to talk to you?”
He went quiet.
Maybe it wasn’t until that exact moment that he realized how little we had to say to each other once you stripped away the shared memories.
He took the four-leaf clover bracelet out of his backpack.
Before I left, I had left it in a drawer with the other gifts.
“I know you don’t like the design. I’ll get you a different one.”
“It’s not about the design.”
“Then is it because Mia has the same one?”
He rushed to explain.
“Grayson picked hers out. I just thought it would be nice for you two to have matching ones. Like sisters.”
“Hers was from all three of you. Mine was just something you grabbed on the side.”
His face went pale.
He clearly hadn’t expected me to remember it that precisely.
“I admit, I wasn’t thinking that day. But it’s just a bracelet. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t.”
I looked at him.
“Neither does the game. Or the trip roster. Or using my money to upgrade her cabin. Or sticking me in a storage room.”
“Take any one of them out on its own, and it looks small enough not to be worth mentioning.”
“But Julian, when you add them all up, it means you chose her.”
His lips moved.
“We didn’t reject you.”
“You just took it for granted that I’d never actually leave.”
I had hit the mark.
The color drained from his face.
A long time passed before he spoke again, quietly.
“If it’s about the game, I can apologize. We all wrote your name because we knew you wouldn’t really get left behind.”
“The three of us talked about it. Mia has health issues, she’s insecure. She needs someone around more than you do.”
A wave of exhaustion washed over me.
Even now, he was still insisting that Mia needed them more.
“Then me leaving is perfect, isn’t it?”
“The four of you can keep looking after each other. Nobody has to fight over who to take care of anymore.”
Julian instinctively grabbed my wrist.
“That’s not what I mean.”
I looked down at his hand.
He recoiled like he’d been burned, letting go immediately.
“Chloe, I just didn’t think you’d actually leave.”
“We said we were all going to college together, didn’t we?”
“You also said, no matter what happened, you’d choose me first.”
He froze in place.
Promises like that come back easy enough when you want to throw them in someone’s face.
He had just forgotten his first.
Other students kept passing by the dorm entrance.
Nina had stopped a short distance away, watching me with worry.
I shook my head at her to say I was fine.
Julian followed my gaze and lowered his voice.
“Come back with me. Please?”
“I already know about the apartment. Grayson and Ethan will save the biggest room for you. Mia already agreed to move to the guest room.”
“As long as you come back, everything can go back to how it was.”
So they thought swapping bedrooms could swap me back.
“But I don’t want it to go back to how it was.”
I looked at him steadily.
“I have my own major, my own friends, my own life here. Nobody looks at me and decides I’m strong enough to be overlooked. Nobody assumes that because I don’t cry, I don’t need to be comforted.”
“Julian, I’m doing well.”
Those few words hit him harder than any blame could have.
He stood there for a long time before finally putting the bracelet back in the box.
“I’m not giving up.”
“You’re just not used to it yet.”
“Once you get used to being without me, you’ll give up.”
I turned and walked into the dorm.
I didn’t hear footsteps behind me.
That night, Mia sent me a long voice message.
She was crying as she told me Julian had skipped their move-in dinner just to come find me.
She said Grayson and Ethan had been blaming each other for my leaving, and hadn’t spoken in days.
Then, cautiously, she asked.
“Chloe, do you have to see all four of us miserable before you’ll come home?”
I finished listening and blocked her too.
Whether they were happy or not had never been my responsibility.