Pits & Poison: These Godly Lies (The Peaches and Honey Duology Book 2)

by R. Raeta

Once, he kept his memories close—shielded them with a fierceness that betrayed their value. Now, he wraps each one like a gift and watches her face as he peels back the layers of who he is. Only she could make feeling exposed feel like relief.

For her, he knits together his past and delivers every dream, every fear, one story at a time—tells her everything she’s always wished to know, even when it’s the answer to a question she never knew to ask. Anna holds each one close, the patchwork of his life growing stitch by stitch until it becomes something she can wrap around herself.

“I suppose that happens when you become too busy to reflect on things. The memory of it fades until the only thing left is the bones.”

“It’s strange to realize such a crucial event in my life stopped being important enough to carry.”

It was, of course, incredibly naïve, but it was a beautiful belief. One he’d struggle to shed. Belief can be tricky like that—it can burrow itself so thoroughly that it becomes part of you. Centuries of horrors could never burn it out of him. Even when he saw that the world wasn’t what he thought, that small part of him never stopped believing that it could be.

It is a strange thing to love the heart that invites pain under their roof.

“A queen doesn’t command the hive—she’s a slave to it.” The moment she’s born, her life becomes dependent on how well she does her job. If she does it poorly, the hive will build a special cell for her replacement before swarming her. The needs of the many will always outweigh the needs of the one.

There is a torture in waiting for the fall; an agony in understanding that the world has given you every reason to expect it.

“Holding you is still worth every bit of pain.”

“Then let us be fools together.”

He breaks and she isn’t strong enough to hold the pieces of him together. Not when she’s broken, too. Together, they fall apart.

Grief is a strange thing. Some moments it’s a weight on her chest, a pressure behind her eyes and glass in her throat. Then, when the tears slow and her breath no longer feels like it’s being torn from her lungs, everything starts to feel less. Numb. It’s the difference between fighting against the current and letting the river sweep her away. Struggle and surrender. Anna thinks it feels a little bit like drowning.

Perhaps that’s the first step. Blindly choosing a path and pretending to hope there’s something brighter at the end of it.

Anna wonders how it must hurt—feeling her pain curling in his chest when he’s already drowning in his own.

“I’m certain the opinions of strangers weigh less than the joy you would be robbing yourself of if you let yourself fear them.”

A true laugh. The kind that rises from her chest like it’s a living, breathing thing. The kind that begins and has no expiration,

Fear beats in her chest, a tattoo against her ribs she knows she may never shed.

“You see a marvel, but I still see the blood those stones were baptized in.”

She’s still not sure which hurts more deeply—knowing time is short or never knowing to say goodbye.

Regrets are stubborn things. They sink their teeth and hold on even as other hopes and other dreams slip through her fingers. But that’s all it is now, Anna realizes. A regret. A wish that soured, because she was robbed of the chance to choose.