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by Jennifer Hartmann

Father didn’t love me; Mom didn’t love me enough. I guess that was why I loved too much. I had a lot of loveless holes to fill.

“My mom was a stargazer. A dreamer.” “Was? Past tense?” “Yes. Now she’s just an alcoholic.”

“Life is living. If you’re not living exactly the way you want to live, then what’s the fucking point?”

Do you like tragic things? Are you drawn to the ghosts in my eyes? Stupid, fruitless thoughts. If he ever sat down with my ghosts and had a heart-to-heart, he’d be running for the hills.

Two strangers on a lakefront, destined for nothing.

Lifting his hand, he grazed the back of his knuckles up my jaw to my cheekbone. “I was curious.” “I was waiting.”

devil on my shoulder leaned in and whispered in my ear: Thou is royally fucked.

“Listen to me. When something breaks you, you pick up the pieces and put yourself back together. Maybe it’s with stitches and glue sticks, but it’s enough to keep going. Nobody needs to stay broken.”

Some mothers weren’t capable of providing or nurturing, or seeing beyond their own self-preservation. Love came easy for some, and for others, it was a distant illusion, forever out of reach.

Not everyone could scoop up their trauma in two shaking hands and mold it into something worth holding. Her pain was clay, taking on a new form, a new shape. One day, it could become her greatest masterpiece.

“So, he’s violent.” “Protective.”

Narratives could always be rewritten.

Too many tears. Too much salt had streaked down my cheeks for one lifetime.

tragic than any stupid fall. I was halfway in love with him—that fall would be the killing kind, and I’d come too far to crash and burn now.

I’d just masturbated a few feet away from my best friend, on Christmas morning, while fantasizing about her father.

I supposed my tastes were more in line with older, wiser, emotionally distant men who smelled like earth and ivy, warm amber, and a plethora of compelling sexual fantasies,

let me finally breathe without choking on the idea of you?

“I would have taken you back to my apartment,” I said darkly, teeth gritted, my fist still tangled in her hair. “And we wouldn’t have made it to the bedroom before I knew what your pussy tasted like.”

Nineteen. Tara’s best friend. Half my age. My ex’s makeshift foster kid. A. Fucking. Teenager.

and I was jerking myself off like a fucking animal.

Now I knew what it felt like to really play with fire. And I was damn certain, that any day now, I’d go up in flames.

I went back to staring at the wall and wishing for death.

Either path we chose felt like death, but this death was sweeter.

I knew he wouldn’t be gentle. I knew he’d take control, make it rough, destroy me—body and soul. And I welcomed every bruise, every bite mark, every scar he’d leave behind.

I still felt his body pressed to mine, felt him between my legs, felt his tongue on my flesh, engraving his essence into me. I’d never be able to scrub him off my skin.

One thing was certain—I wasn’t numb anymore. And oh, how I wished I was.

I mean…what if you found out that I fucked your dad?

The reddest of red flags fluttered in front of my vision as I watched Reed spin around and

“You didn’t give me a chance to talk, Halley. I was still fucking inside you when you checked out and then bolted from the apartment.”

“Because you’re older.”

“I’m certain it’s going to hurt like hell when this is over.”

and to allow this to be exactly what it was: a forbidden affair that would live in the shadows and never see the light of day. I’d never take her out to dinner, hold her hand in public, or put a ring on her finger.

“Beautiful things don’t last,”

“Every moment with you fucking hurts.” His voice was pure grit, words cracking and breaking. “Every moment without you…hurts so much more.”

hands. “I am letting you go, Comet.”

“You can’t pull me from rock bottom and then send me right back.”

“Falling for you has been the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” I confessed through the anguish. “Everything else? Painful. Torturous. Difficult beyond belief. But loving you…” The anger died out, flatlining to a dead pulse. “Effortless.”

“You never needed saving, Halley. You were never lost.”

this fairy-tale illusion of candy hearts and paper flowers. It’s messy and painful. But it’s always worth it.”

Not all mothers were meant to be caretakers. Not all monsters were meant to be rehabilitated.

“You know what?” Reed spun back around and stalked toward me, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “Fuck it.”

“You’re my little girl.” “I’ll always be your little girl.” Tara gathered her purse from the couch and breezed past me, muttering a final statement over her shoulder that twisted the blade in my chest, all the way through. “And you’ll always be the man who broke my heart.”

“You keep answering my questions with questions.” “That’s how we find answers.”