Hunt Me Down {boyxboy} ✓

Chapter 32

Irene's POV

"Break up?" I repeated, blinking at him.

"I think it would be for the best," he said, his eyes finding it difficult to stay on my face. They strayed once again towards the school building to the right and then to the parking lot exit to the left. He sighed before he looked at me again, a pained expression on his face.

"Nathaniel, what is going on?"

He'd been acting strange during the weekend and even weirder today at school. He didn't talk to anyone, he would space off in the middle of classes, the teachers would ask him questions and he wouldn't know what to reply... I even felt as if I was working alone in Biology; I had to cover for his part of the assignment.

"Does this have to do with you and Val?" I asked and his jaw clenched. "You haven't talked to her all day; you don't even look at her..."

"She did something over the weekend and it was too much this time," he answered coolly. "Too much."

"Do you want to talk about it?" I suggested.

"No!" He snapped at me. "Sorry." He sighed and leaned on a nearby car for a second before its alarm started blaring. Nathaniel jumped away with a hand over his chest and we had to move to another part of the parking lot in order to continue our conversation.

"Look, I'm trying to do the right thing here..." he began once we found a spot away from the noise and from the few students who had yet to leave the school.

"By breaking up with me? Is this how you make amends?" I asked. "When I called you over the weekend to ask if you wanted me to come by, you said no and that you would make amends. Were you planning this back then?"

"What? No! I mean, not then, but yes..." He sighed once more and pinched the bridge of his nose. His tempo was no longer hectic when he spoke again. "I mean, no, not when I said that, but I've been thinking about it for a while. I really like you, Irene..."

"You are breaking up with me because you like me?" A hysteric giggle left my lips.

"I'm letting you go now because I really like you; I like you more than I've liked any other girl," he said, sincerity in eyes and voice. "But my family will have to move again, I know we will, and if you and I keep being together, it will be harder to say goodbye. If we do it now, it will be easier to move on; maybe we'll even salvage our friendship. I'm trying to do the right thing by you."

"You are right," I uttered after a few minutes of silence between us and wrapped my arms around me. "You are perfectly right. It would be better if we ended it now before... Before one of us fell in love," my voice shook at the last word. Would he notice? Could he tell?

"So... You agree with me?" Nathaniel asked, his brown eyes narrowing slightly.

"Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. It's not like I planned us to spend Christmas together," I tried to make it sound like a joke.

I had planned for us to spend Christmas together.

No just Nathaniel and me; I'd planned for our families to meet. My older sister was coming back from college so what better time to do that? I couldn't wait for her to finally meet my boyfriend; I'd bragged so much about him over the phone, I'd probably given her a headache. She had not complain about it though; she was happy I'd found someone.

I knew that Nat would have a family dinner on Christmas; we were too. But I also knew the Reeds didn't have plans for the day after and neither did my family so I'd planned to invite them to our restaurant and introduce our parents to each other. I'd spent hours this weekend making up interesting meals for our get-together and making a list of items to buy for Nathaniel and his family for the holiday.