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Want something? Pax will take it from you. Love something? Pax will destroy it. Love him? Then Heaven help you. You’d have to be the stupidest person to walk the face of the earth.
I’ve been bleeding out, one way or another, my entire fucking life. What’s another cut? What’s another drop?
“I was falling,” she said. “Always. I was falling, and the fear of it happening, while it was happening, crushed me.” “And then?” She looks me dead in the eye. “I hit rock bottom. There was nowhere else to fall.” “So now you’re fearless.” She shakes her head. “No. Now I just don’t care.”
If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. Nietzsche said that.
“Fine. Since you asked so nicely, I’ll tell you the truth. I’m doing it because you’re a parasite, Presley Maria Witton Chase. You’ve set up shop inside my head and I can’t get rid of you. I tried forcing you out, but you just won’t leave, so I’m prepared to try another tactic. I’m gonna fuck you out of my system. And once I’ve accomplished that, I plan on forgetting your obnoxiously long name as quickly as humanly possible.”
“Just…for god’s sake, be as careful as you can be, okay? I’d hate to see you get chewed up and spat out by the likes of that boy.”
“But that's the thing, Pax. When all a person has ever known is misery...it's what they come to expect. Soon, they feed on it, because it's the only sustenance they know. Eventually, their misery becomes their strength. They can endure so much more than anyone else. You'll be surprised by what I can endure now. And once the surprise has worn off, you'll see that you're powerless to hurt me. I told you the truth in the dining hall. There really is nothing left of me to hurt.”
“I’ve already knelt in a lake of your blood, Chase. I’ve already had it on my tongue. I don’t fucking care if it comes out of your wrists or your pussy. Ain’t gonna faze me one bit.”
“A bastard’s touch, the thought of you. Aye, a waking curse upon my days, I endure you like sun and rain, and both the heat and the cold you feel the same. I crawl atop the shattered panes that fell from the windows of the house you did destroy. And I relish the blood that seeps from me, even as I hate you, because it flows only through my wretched veins for you.”
It isn’t until I’m climbing into my own bed, deliciously sore, my muscles melting off my bones, that I realize something: At no point did he wash me off of him. And he was still wearing the friendship bracelet.
“If we’re not friends, then we’re something else. If you’re not careful, I’ll start to think that you actually like me.”
“I’m being…me.” She has no idea how monumental that is. How long I’ve done everything in my power to not be me.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
Jonah was looking at twenty-five years for what he did to Chase. Twenty-five years doesn’t seem like enough. But I have a long memory. I won’t forget. I’ll be waiting outside the prison gates for Jonah Witton the day his sentence comes to an end.
“The path of least resistance doesn’t always mean taking the easiest option. Sometimes…it means that your soul finds its way home, toward something it loves, after you’ve held it back for too fucking long. So…do with that what you will, I guess.”
“The path of least resistance doesn’t always mean taking the easiest option. Sometimes it means your soul finding its way home, toward something it loves, after you’ve held it back for too fucking long.”
“Both. I want to fight with you and get mad at you. I want to finish our fucking book together, and I want to fall out with you over it. And then I want to make up afterwards. I want to hold you. I want to protect you. I want to feel your head on my chest every night when we fall asleep. And I’m cut up on the inside because of that. I’m not supposed to want any of that. I don’t know how to fucking deal with wanting that. But…is any of that what you want? If I put down my weapons here, do you think you can put down yours?” He throws his hands up in the air. “Fuck, Chase. I have no fucking idea
...more
“I welcome the day I lose my mind, Chase. At least then, when I’ve truly lost it, I’ll be oblivious to the fact. I’ll just be crazy. Nothing in the world will matter anymore. I want you to be mine. I—I’m fucking in love with you, Chase. I want to learn how to show you that. I want to make you fucking believe it.
“I love you, too. I am yours,” I whisper. “I have been since the second I woke up on that sidewalk outside the hospital and I saw you looking down at me. From that moment on, you’ve held my entire existence in the palm of your hand.”
“You wanna be careful, looking at me like that. I’ll have no choice but to punish you for your audacity…and I don’t think you can take that level of attention.”
“I thought I could walk away from you. God, what a fucking idiot.” He shakes his head, wonder flicking across his handsome face. “I knew it when you opened your eyes on the floor outside the hospital and you looked at me for the first time. It was like part of me snapped. I thought you’d broken something inside of me. I hated you for it. And then I realized that you hadn’t broken anything. You’d—you’d fixed it.”
