I Have an Invisible Stalker (Guardians #1)

Chapter 54

Olivia's POV

"What?" I stare at Brooke as tears continue to pour down her cheeks. Because she isn't answering, I grab her shoulders and shake her. "What did you just say?"

Brooke, however, breaks into a loud wail and slumps against me. I stagger a step back, barely able to keep both of our balances as she rests her forehead against my shoulder and continues to produce a high-pitched cry of an elk.

"For the love of..." Eliza clasps her hands over her ears. "Make her stop."

"There, there." I awkwardly pat Brooke's back. "It's going to be alright."

"No, it's not. It hurts!" Brooke wails and wraps her arms around me. "I want Weston. I want him to hold me and assure me that he doesn't hate me."

"Hate you? Why would he hate you?"

"Because I'm a terrible person."

"No, you're not." I continue to pat her back despite a part of me screaming at me to ask her what she meant by her being to blame for my accident.

"Yes, I am." She lifts her head off my shoulder and her tear-stained eyes meet my confused ones. "I know you have a crush on Weston."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"It's the reason why everything happened. I chose him because I knew you had a crush on him."

"Chose him? You're not making any sense."

Brooke, however, ignores my confusion, slumps down onto the sidewalk, and continues as if I've never spoken. "Because I chose him you were in that accident."

From the corner of my eye, I see Eliza remove her hands off her ears and take a step closer to us, but I force myself to stay focused on Brooke. With a sigh, I crouch down, so Brooke and I are once again on eye-level. Brooke, however, covers her eyes with her hands and breaks into another wail.

"He's going to hate me the moment he realizes why I started to date him."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I groan, but force myself to count to three. "Why don't you start at the beginning?"

I have to count to three four times before Brooke finally lowers her hands and lifts her panda eyes to meet mine.

"It all started with the crush I had at the beginning of this school year." She sniffs. "Do you remember him? Tall, big arms?"

"Sure. Didn't I set you up with him?"

"That's the one." She purses her lips into a tight line and for a moment I think she's going to break into another sob. "I told you I had a crush on him, and you told him. But I wasn't the one he liked. It was you."

"That can't be true. I remember him agreeing to go out with you."

"He thought you'd come onto the date as well. When only I showed up he told me that you're the one he likes. This is why I approached Weston."

"What?" I blink, not understanding how we got from her crush telling her he doesn't like her to Weston. Because my legs are starting to cramp from the crouching position, I lower myself onto the cold asphalt. "What does Weston have to do with this?"

"When the guy left, I swore to myself that I would do to you what you did to me." Brooke wipes her nose into her sleeve. "So, when I found out that you have a crush on Weston, I asked him out. Because it turned out he liked me, I wanted you to catch us that night, so you would also have your heart broken by your crush. But you never showed up."

"What night? What are you talking about?"

"The night of your accident." Brooke sniffs. "I called you."