More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 12 - October 12, 2025
“What I’m saying is, Jace sometimes you meet someone and you don’t understand the tie you two have. Sometimes you fall for the wrong reasons and sometimes the right ones. In this case, I think you saw a girl who needed saving . . . And you wanted to fix her broken heart so you didn’t need to mend your own.
And if you want to know the truth, I think you guys have passion but not stability. And that passion always dies out as quickly as it comes in.”
But over winter break, I learned three valuable things: Time heals everything. What you think other people think about you is really what you think about yourself. One man is not all men.
All because I started to love life again. Loving life wasn’t the same as loving myself, mind you. But I’d come to realize that taking space from Jace made me feel better about myself, not worse.
The pressure I carried to be the girl he wanted was overwhelming and unattainable. I’d broken every part of me trying to fit into that pretty, perfect mould. I’d lost sight of who I was just so he could glance in my direction for one second – because that one second was my heroin. And he watched me overdose.
“You stayed and you toughed it out for pieces of shit who never deserved you,
broke you and you stayed because a part of you wants to feel like you did something right. That you made something work. That you tried. Because if nothing redeemable came out of your commitment, then you burned for nothing.
“We’ve been done a million times and you never avoided me for weeks like this.”
It was exhausting to chase after someone who never wanted you from the start. It was even more exhausting to pretend that there was a chance in hell you could change their mind. “Honestly Jace . . . ” How real was I getting? Screw it. “You fucked me over,” I started, bleeding into the pain I felt for months. “You
fucked me up. And yet, you come back every time. Why? Why do you insist on doing this to me?” His response may have been the most honest thing he’s ever said, and that terrified me. In one breath, he shattered my soul. “You let me.”
I allowed him to hurt me. I allowed him to think there was a chance. You let me. It was all my fault. The way I’d been feeling this entire term was my fault. We finished quicker than we started. We barely got time to explore what we could become. You let me. It was all because of me. I should apologize.
“No, no, no,” I whispered through sobs, throwing my phone against the stall. “No, fuck! No more of this.” But I scrambled for my phone, a large crack denting the screen protector and answered anyway. “Leave me alone,” I spat,
“I saw you,” he said, pointing to my chest. “The real you. The you that you don’t show anyone, and I felt like I’d won something.”
Hope. The thing that killed me. The thing that cost me everything.
One more step towards hope. “What if we could work?”
“So many guys that will treat you right, who will deserve you.” He spoke as if he were a hundred miles away, not rubbing my cheek and keeping me still. I couldn’t hold back the tears. They came as easy as breathing. “Why . . . ” My fingers found his knuckles, then grasped at his wrist. “Why couldn’t it be you?”
By begging for a man who couldn’t be what I needed, I devalued my worth, my self-respect.
“You want to know what I think?” He didn’t respond. I said it anyway. “I think you lie to yourself about who you are, Jace.”
“One day you’re the mysterious Jace Boland, the next you couldn’t care less who’s watching. One day you’re happy, one day you’re too prideful for your own good, and another day you’re sharp and callous. “Somewhere,” I wiped a tear from my waterline, “Somewhere between those days I fell for you. And I think you expected me to love you when you never, not once, showed me the parts of you I could love. You’ve never even shown yourself.”
“Promises never meant much to you, Jace.”
“Are you that proud, to not even hear me out, to listen to someone other than yourself? Do you not see that you’ve been unsuccessful doing the same damn fucking thing every single day and getting no results?”
There were moments of utter heartbreak that tormented me through my travels, moments that found me in my sleep. Promises he made never to hurt me, but bled me dry until the very end.
And he still continued to do so. To play on my emotions. To see if I would run back all to boost his ego. One. Year. Later.
I ran even though I knew he wasn’t chasing me, because he never would. It would always be me. Days, months, years later – It would always be me.
“Honestly, Stacy . . . ” I exhaled, cursing the reality of my life. How I’d travelled to three different places across the world and still wound up back in the same position that I was last year. Fake growth. Fake healing. I’d wasted three hundred and sixty-five days chasing a fake dream of being fake happy.
“Beatrice, you’re used to getting what you want, not what you need. Because you don’t chase after kindness, you chase after challenges.”
Jace told me he promised to love me once, but he never told me that he truly did. Everything he said he felt for me were all indirect comments that never ensured security.
All Jace wanted from the beginning was to be loved, but he had no intention of loving.
To prove a point. Because that’s all it was. That’s all it ever was.
He never did anything with me as the primary focus. I was never a priority, never first. I satisfied him, but I was never enough to fulfill him.
But as I stared at the beautiful man I’d come to know, I realized I never really did. He never really showed me. And it wouldn’t be possible for us. We were never made to last.
I couldn’t be who I wanted to be when I was with him, because for a while I was nothing if he wasn’t mine.
The acceptance started after I realized I would never become who I was meant to be if he stayed in my life. I would never share the smiles these couples had, the smiles they gave one another out of genuine loyalty. He consumed me when we were together, but he consumed me most when we weren’t; when I had to worry about who he was talking to, who was better than me. The right person would have never given me those doubts to begin with.
