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Submission isn’t the same as weakness.
The greatest friends are those who stand with you against the dark. Protect them at all costs.
Good girls don’t take bad boys out into the deep dark woods. Not unless they’re planning on being bad too.
“The world is a fucked-up place. It always has been. People are just more honest about it now.”
“You need a monster to protect you from the monsters, then I’ll do the dirty work. My hands are already filthy with it.”
“But if you want to learn how to rip out their throats yourself, sugar, then I’ll show you how to fucking bite.”
“Come on, sugar, I can take it,” I taunt. “Give me more. Show me all that pretty rage.”
“No, sugar, I just think fucking has to be the one time where you should be able to run on instinct and get all the shit out that’s been riding you. If you need to take a swing at me for that to happen, then good for you.”
“Well, now,” he murmurs. “Aren’t you enough to break a man’s
“Note that Miss Anderson seems to respond to all manner of disgusting stimuli,”
“Woman’s power lies in man’s passion, and she knows how to use it, if man doesn’t understand himself. He has only one choice: to be the tyrant over or the slave of woman—to which you write, ‘Let me be both. Your tyrant and your slave. In allowing me to own you, you own me.’”
“I hate that anyone ever told you that you couldn’t have it all.”
But this way you’re feeling? Angry, and out of control, and anxious, and all out of sorts? All the thoughts that are messing you up about whatever happened? It’s called PTSD, and you need to see him about it. Think of it as a combat-given gunshot wound to your mental health. See a professional before you bleed the hell out in front of us.”
“My whole life, I’ve relied on being able to read people. I’ve become quite good at it, and it’s one of my few skills that has kept me safe.”
Survival tip #20 You have to be the worst best version of yourself to survive live. Kill Protect the weak. Strike from Kiss in the shadows. Run from a Stand and fight. Leave your friends behind. Protect your friends at all costs.
“Behave, my girl. You don’t want my brand of pain.”
We are all made up of decisions and experiences, both good and bad. We are flawed people who triumph and fail daily. It is not a crime to be human.”
“If your issues stem from a false self-perception, then we can work on changing that. If they stem from problematic patterns of behavior, then we can help break those habits. But choice is everything, Eden. You can choose to do the work. You can choose to fight, to learn new skills, to grow and change in whichever ways will make you proud moving forward.” His voice grows unbearably kind. “We can’t change the things that happen to us—only change what they help us to become.”
I want to act in ways that make me proud. I want to be strong enough to protect the people I care about. I want to be brave enough to tell them how I feel. I don’t want to choose between the people I love—and I don’t want them to have to choose for me, either. I want them to have every happiness, because it’s too rare in this world, and they deserve all of it. I want to be better than jealousy and pettiness.
“You’re quivering right now, do you know? So full of unspent need. It’s a siren call for men like us. To taste it. To spend it. To waste all that gorgeous lust on our vile perversions.”
He and I didn’t learn how to love safely. Love came turbulent and unpredictable—always with the threat of it being snatched away.
You’re soft so you don’t break. You mold. You bend. You give and take, and I still think you need to be harder, because you take too much from everyone. But fuck, you take it beautifully.”
