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“I know things have been hard for you. I know life dealt you a crappy hand. I can’t promise you it will get easier, but I can promise you there’s nothing wrong with you. And that you’re loved, no matter what happens. As you are now, and as whoever you become.”
I relish in the pain. Let it mingle with the sweet ache that comes from being wrapped in Mason’s arms. Mason… My best friend. My hero, always my hero. I despise it as much as I love it.
“No. No, Iz. I’m not worth that.” She whips her head toward me, brown hair flying. Glaring at me, she says, “You’re worth everything.”
“What about our friendship?” he says quietly. “What about us? Do I mean nothing to you?” You mean everything to me, and that’s the problem.
If not for me, for him. Always for him. Because I might not be a hero like him, but he is and always has been my kryptonite.
They say when tragedy strikes, you remember every little surrounding detail. What you were doing. What you were eating. What you said last. What you were watching. And the detail that will stand out to me most of all… Is how I went to sleep smiling.
We’re clothed, and yet I never feel so naked as I do as when I’m in Mason’s arms.
He’s a noose I’d dangle from in strangled, agonized hellfire for eternity.
Well, that’s grief for you, or whatever you want to call this. It’s unpredictable and nonlinear. One second the memories are just that—memories—and the next you’re rocking in a corner, praying to whoever might be listening for some kind of relief.
In his arms, I’m a stand-in for someone else. In mine, he’s everything I’ve always wanted.
I take it all. Accepting his violence for the precious gift it is. Because as far as I’m concerned, there’s no one else in the world who deserves to unleash as much as Jeremy Montgomery.
And right now, there’s no one more deserving of his wrath than me.
I’m not Jeremy the Coward anymore. I’m Jeremy the Wicked. And if hope shall be my downfall… Then fall I will.
“Grief, trauma…they have a way of chiseling us down to the ugliest versions of ourselves.”
Without her, I’ve been half a person. And now without him too, I’ll be lucky if there’s even a sliver of me left.
When we lose someone we love we must learn not to live without them, but to live with the love they left behind. —Unknown
“It won’t kill you to let go, even if it feels like it.” She pauses meaningfully. “But it will kill you if you keep it all inside.”
If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last four and a half years, it’s that there is no right or wrong way to grieve. Death is morbid. Why should we grieve like it’s not?
You’d think after all this time it would get easier, and then it just comes out of nowhere, fucking obliterating you.
He’s what’s been missing all along… What I’ve been chasing. Right in front of my fucking face.
