Never (Never, #1)

by Jessa Hastings

How terribly silly of me. How terribly like the kind of girl I’m not. Imagine it, me, not saying the true thing to spare a man his feelings. Ridiculous.

He laughs and I like the sound so much. Like you’re sitting by a fire with a drink in your hand that you love, that’s how his laugh feels when it hits you—it warms you up from the inside out.

I let my lovesick heart bathe in what I saw before, when he called me names and nothing. I drink deep from that cup, let the poison run down my throat, fill up my stomach, and push down and away the nagging feeling I have that he is good and steady and stable like the earth I love so much. I remember that under its beautiful surface is just fiery rocks and a molten core that would burn me alive the second I let it. I remind myself that the earth can crack and shake, spilt itself wide open and swallow you whole. So I let myself fall back into the crack in the ground that I fell through when I heard him and glare back up at him through that darkness his words pushed me into.