More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“I’ll love you the right way this time,” he whispered, and his breath fanned my cheek. “If you’ll show me how.”
“I’m yours,” I whispered, giving myself entirely to him. “You can have me anytime, anyplace, anywhere because you own me.” “Jesus.” “Every inch of me,” I breathed, chest heaving against his as our bodies collided. “So, take what’s yours.”
“You do know that I was in the middle of something back there.” “Wouldn’t you prefer to be in the middle of my legs?”
“Sorry for the, uh, for the mess.” “Oh please.” She rolled her eyes. “If I didn’t want you to come in my mouth, I would have stopped you, and if I didn’t want to swallow, I wouldn’t have.” Fuck me.
“Jesus, your mouth is terrible.” “What was that?” she teased, eyes twinkling with mischief as she climbed off my lap, reached for my hand, and pulled me up. “You want to do terrible things to my mouth?”
“You hurt yourself and that’s the same thing,” I choked out. “Because when you hurt, I hurt. When you burn, I go down in flames with you.
“I love you like a brother, I always have, but one of these days you’re going to slip so far off the tracks that none of us will be able to reach you.”
“Why don’t you talk to me, Joe?” she asked then, tone laced with sadness. “I’m always confiding in you, but you never do the same.”
The clearest of my memories involved nights with her. The only nights I ever wanted to remember were the ones I spent with her.
The darkness I always felt on the inside was nothing compared to the eternal pit of night I found myself in. I wanted out. I needed out. I couldn’t take this anymore.
“You’ve got a beautiful mind, Joey Lynch, and a wonderful heart. You can beat this. You just have to want to. It’s half the battle. You can still fix this. You have time. You can get better. Just try, Joe. That’s all you have to do. Just try, baby. I love you so much. Watching you self-destruct like this is killing me.”
Confused and panicked, I jerked away from the mirror, unable to look at myself a second longer. Because I despised the person staring back at me. I fucking hated that piece of shit.
I knew my actions were hurting her in a way that could send her away permanently, but I couldn’t stop myself anymore. I couldn’t pull myself back out of the hole I’d fallen into. Worse, a huge part of me didn’t want to.
I loved her, and no number of drugs could change that. Neither could the depression that was eating me from the inside out. Because it had to be depression, right? Wanting to die wasn’t something an eighteen-year-old fantasized about.
“Rule number one, you boundary-absent, morally lacking, conniving bitch: If you put hands on another girl’s fella, make damn sure you know how to throw a punch!”
Tears. I couldn’t stop them from falling. It was ridiculous because I’d always thought of myself as a strong girl, but lately, all I seemed to do was cry. And lie.
“Let me help you. Let me save you, Joey.” “You can’t.” What part of that didn’t she get? “There’s nothing left to save, Mrs. Kavanagh, so please just stop.”
“You fucked my head up worse than he ever did. He used his fists, but you? You got in my head,” I admitted, on a roll now, as pain and poison spilled from my lips. “You broke my mind.” I slammed the heel of my hand against my temple, desperately trying to emphasize to this woman just how badly she had damaged me. “I don’t work right anymore, and it’s because your voice is stuck in my head!
“Don’t depend on her, or Darren, or anyone else, because in the end, the world will let you down. They will all let you down.” Anyone with the Lynch last name, at least. “And you?” my baby sister asked, looking up at me like I could somehow fix her world when I couldn’t even fix my own. “Does that include you?” “Especially me,” I forced myself to tell her, though it almost killed me to say it. And then I did the best thing I could do for her. For all of them. I walked away.
“I can’t.” I would not turn her into the woman in my kitchen. I loved her too much to allow that to happen. My father didn’t do the right thing for the mother of his children, but I would do it for mine. “I’m so sorry.”
But I knew. I knew this was different. Something had changed in Joey. I saw it in his eyes. He was resigned. He was finished. For him, the fight was over. The fire inside of him, the one that had kept his heart beating through all the hardship and pain, had been snuffed out.
“So, what’s it going to be, Joey Lynch? Are we dying tonight, or are we living?”
“I didn’t want to leave you,” he admitted and then a heart-wrenching sob tore from his chest. “I only wanted to protect you.”
All he’d ever wanted was her love. And she never gave that to him.
“I know that you never intended to hurt me with any of it.” “But we both know that I did,” he answered gruffly. “Hurt you.” I had no answer to that. He had hurt me. Worse than hurt me, I think he ruined me.
I was sick of myself. That was a weird statement, but it was the god-honest truth. I was sick of every thought, notion, and idea that traveled through the fucked-up brain I had been given at birth.
Whatever I was offered, regardless of the consequences, if it was bad for me, I welcomed it with open arms. During therapy, they tried to tell me this was a version of self-harm. I said nothing.
Through the storm, through the Category 5 fucking hurricane that was my life, she stayed, never giving up on me even when I’d given up on myself.
Sometimes, I wondered if I stayed still enough, would the world just forget about me?
“I want to so fucking badly that it keeps me up at night. It’s why I went back that night. Why I let Lizzie talk me off the edge. Why I didn’t throw myself off that bridge. Why I’m here right now.” Frustrated and anxious, I cracked my knuckles and walked to the window. “I know I’m not good enough, but I want to be.”
The stupid fucking journal I’d been encouraged to keep in hospital felt unbearably heavy in my hands, filled with more darkness than I knew what to do with. Trusting wasn’t something that came easily to me, not even when it came to writing in a fucking journal.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been fighting for so long, I don’t know how to take my finger off the trigger,” I muttered, cracking my knuckles. “Fuck it, maybe I am crazy. Maybe it is better that I can’t talk to her. I’ve already dragged her through the ringer.”
“I have a hard time with living,” I admitted. “Being alive is a challenge for me because I don’t work right. I don’t seem to have the right tools for going through the motions. It’s like I’m stuck on fight mode. I’m constantly watching for danger. Doesn’t matter if it’s there or not, I’m programed to sniff it out. Wasn’t so bad when I self-medicated. The drugs took the edge off everything. Made being alive bearable. Until I couldn’t go an hour without them. Then I wanted to live even less.”
“I fear I may never wear my yellow bikini again.” “Didn’t you buy that bikini when we were in second year?” “So?” “So, maybe it doesn’t matter if you can’t fit into a bikini that you wore when you were fourteen?” “Ugh, I hate it when you’re so logical,” she
Death was all around me, peaceful and still, and I was momentarily jealous.
My spite and bitterness had given me something to live for.
It was her. It always had been. It always would be. The girl from the wall.
Wordlessly, she took my hand in hers and placed it to her chest. “Feel that?” “Yeah.” Her heart was hammering violently against my palm. “I feel it.” “That’s you,” she whispered. “That’s what you do to me.” “Still?” “Then. Still. Always.”
“I don’t want to do this on my own.” My heart cracked in my chest. “You won’t have to,” I vowed, finding strength in having someone need me again. I needed that, I suddenly realized. I needed to be needed.
He was so patient with me, even when I didn’t have any patience for myself.
