It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover (z-lib.org).epub

same pink bedspread and curtains I’ve had since I was twelve. For the first time ever
I felt like ripping down my poster of Adam Brody.
Atlas didn’t seem to care how my room was decorated. He looked straight at my
window—the one that looks out over the backyard—then he glanced back at me.
Right before he walked out the back door he said, “Thank you for not being
disparaging, Lily.”
And then he was gone.
Of course I’ve heard the term disparaging before, but it was weird hearing a
teenage guy use it. What’s even weirder is how everything about Atlas seems so
contradictory. How does a guy who is obviously humble, well-mannered, and uses
words like disparaging end up homeless? How does any teenager end up homeless?
I need to find out, Ellen.
I’m going to find out what happened to him. You just wait and see.
—Lily
• • •
I’m about to open another entry when my phone rings. I crawl across the
couch for it and I’m not the least bit surprised to see it’s my mother again.
Now that my father has passed and she’s alone, she’ll probably call me
twice as much as she did before.
“Hello?”
“What do you think about my moving to Boston?” she blurts out.
I grab the throw pillow next to me and shove my face into it, muffling a
scream. “Um. Wow,” I say. “Really?”
She’s quiet, and then, “It was just a thought. We can discuss it
tomorrow. I’m almost to my meeting.”
“Okay. Bye.”
And just like that, I want to move out of Massachusetts. She can’t move
here. She doesn’t know anyone here. She’d expect me to entertain her
every day. I love my mother, don’t get me wrong, but I moved to Boston to
be on my own, and having her in the same city would make me feel less
independent.
My father was diagnosed with cancer three years ago while I was still in
college. If Ryle Kincaid were here right now, I’d tell him the naked truth
that I was a little bit relieved when my father became too ill to physically
hurt my mother. It completely changed the dynamic of their relationship