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November 30 - December 2, 2024
My entire destruction felt possible from that kiss, and I had no desire to fight it. It was what books and song lyrics told you kisses ought to be. It was the end of childhood and the beginning of something else, and I knew I would not be the same when it was over.
loved him. I was as certain of that as I was my own name, both universal truths. I am Jude Alcott, and I am in love with Caspien Deveraux.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he said, tucking a stray strand of hair behind his ear. It had dried on his ride and now sat curled and golden on his head. “Like what?” “Like that.” “Don’t all the boys you do that to look at you like this, after?” Maybe it was a pathetic attempt to find out how many boys there were, or maybe it was an attempt to make myself look less...less in love. But his eyes grew very serious as he looked at me. “No,” He said. “No one looks at me the way you do.”
“He’s going to break your heart, you know. And still, you’ll love him. He’ll break it over and over again and you’ll continue to love him.”
“The way I have always seen it,” Gideon said as he sipped his wine, “is that we have only two choices when the heart is broken. The first is to allow it to heal. It is quite astounding what the human heart is able to overcome. Though it shall never be quite as strong as it was – its foundations will be forever weakened – it can heal.
“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.”
“No.” I cut him off. “Don’t. I don’t want to hear it, Gideon. I don’t want to hear any more words of wisdom about broken hearts or theories about what it is Cas actually wants and needs. What I want is to pretend he doesn’t fucking exist. What I want is to wake up in the morning and forget that he’s out there living a life with someone else.” I was saying too much. It was dangerous to say this much. “Do you have any idea what that feels like? Knowing that? Knowing that while I’m here, alone, looking at all the places he used to exist in, he’s just...off somewhere else with someone else? While
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I raised an eyebrow. “You think he’ll come crawling back?” “Christ, no, he wouldn’t crawl for anyone,” Luke said, and we both laughed. “But he’ll walk in that weird upright way he has, right back to you.”
Against all reason and better judgement, I dropped my head onto his shoulder, turning it so that I could press my nose against his neck and inhale. I nosed gently at the skin, breathing him in. I waited for him to mock me, push me away, or tell me to stop, but he did neither. Instead, he angled his head to give me better access. I breathed deeper.
My absolute favorite scene
No, I wasn’t the predator. He was. He’d always been the one hunting me. I’d only ever tried to survive him.
“You know I don’t. Jude, sometimes you’re so fucking childlike, it scares me a little.” He said, “I think I hate the person who hurt you, but then I remember that he was a child too.”
Soon, I fell into that familiar trance of watching and listening to him move and speak. That commanding way he’d always had of holding my attention, of being the only thing I could see, of being the sun to my Icarus.
Suddenly, he leaned forward, and I thought, terrified, that he was going to kiss me. Instead, he leaned his forehead against mine and breathed me in. His breath was gin-sweet and hot, and I tried to steady my own.
As he lay sprawled there, panting, naked, and hard, I tried to consider what this would mean, how much it was going to hurt when he left me again – because he would, it was what he did, and decided I didn’t care. I was Jude. He was Cas. This was us. What was one more battle scar on my heart when the war was this glorious?
“I’m yours, Cas,” I told him. “You’re mine, and I’m yours. Always. Tell me you know that, tell me.” “I know, Jude,” he replied, soothingly. “I know.”
I still love you. I think I always will. But it’s like my parents, I’m never going to stop loving them, I’m only going to get better at living without them loving me back.
“Money isn’t comfort to me, Gideon. Comfort is going to sleep with the person you love wrapped up in your arms. It’s knowing the people you love are safe and happy. Comfort’s not choosing a piece of shit grooming abuser over someone who would have spent every day trying to make you happy. Comfort is knowing you deserve happiness and to be loved. That’s my comfort, Gideon. He was my comfort, and I would have been his, and you’re part of the reason neither of us has it. So keep your fucking money. I’m not interested in it.”
stayed because of me, because I’d convinced myself it was what I deserved.
“Jude, you have to understand the way I saw myself then. It’s impossible to let yourself be loved when you’re as inherently un-loveable as I believed myself to be.”
Everything about him drew me in. How he smelled, the sound of his voice, his laugh, the shape of his mouth. But mostly, it was always this: the way he had of looking at me. As though I was something he needed in order to breathe. Some vital commodity he would die without.
