Exodus (The Ravenhood #2)

by Kate Stewart

“Fuck you, you backwoods fake-ass fucking Robin-Hood-wannabe son of a bitch!”

The way i snorted

Our time together wasn’t significant enough. I wasn’t significant enough to cause a ripple in their agenda.

The longer they remain silent, the more my heart breaks.

I’d been a fool to think I knew heartbreak before, and maybe I have, but never have I felt I lost a piece of myself to it, until now.

Today, I forced myself out of bed and mindlessly dressed, determined to try and spend a few hours outside of my head.

Me the past two months

I’m still very much in love with them, now more than ever. Even while my resentment grows for their absence and silence.

His hand slides down to grip the wrist dangling at my side, and in the next second, I’m turned around and standing chest-to-chest with Sean. “Hey, Pup.” Fresh tears fill my eyes as I gape at him, his sparkling eyes dimming when he reads my expression.

“No, please—” “I have to. I’m sorry.” I shake my head and drop my gaze as waiting tears start to fall. He tips my chin and searches my eyes, devastation in his own. “Please, Pup, eat”—he swipes his thumb across my chin—“dance, sing, smile.” “Please don’t go.” Expression somber, he presses a gentle kiss to my lips, a sob erupting from me, breaking it all too soon. “Sean, wait—”

There’s a scene in one of the Twilight movies where Bella remains unmoving in a chair—riddled in heartbreak—while staring out the window, watching the seasons pass before her eyes.

No cause i literally said this to my friends, that i feel like bella

realized I’d lived the past three seasons of my life much the same way she did when she was deserted by love.

But tonight presents a new hurdle. After eight months of painful silence from both my lost loves, I agreed to a date.

I just want to laugh again without the sad pause of recollection at the end of it.

just want to feel some sort of closeness again, one that has nothing to do with the men who refuse to exit my dreams, the way they have my life.

got both Sean and Dominic beat by a few inches. His build is monstrous, menacing, like he went straight from infant to man, no in-between.

But even he hasn’t been bold enough to step up and claim me, to come forward in backing his declaration, his decision. To fight for me. Not in the way he should.

He . . . grins, and I do a double-take. The sight of him without his jacket, his button-down rolled up at the sleeves revealing thick, veined, muscular forearms does unwelcome things to me.

I’m that girl now—the one who got her heart broken and retreated into herself.

I’ve made a fool of myself over two men who haven’t bothered to show up for me in endless months. And for what? The high? Now all I feel is the crash, the inevitable burn.

Acceptance. That’s one of the five steps of grief, right?

I’m thankful for every vulnerable second of it because I see the recognition when he realizes what I already know. He didn’t want to feel anything, and instead, he felt everything.

Je ne veux pas n’être qu’une phase pour toi.”

“Fight for me. For once in my goddamn life, fight for me. Fight for your place with me.”

“You broke her heart, and you should know you were the first man to break mine, too. But at least with her, it was a clean break”—I shake my head—“but you’ve been breaking mine for twenty long years.

Dream a thousand dreams and then make a thousand things happen.”

Roman’s rejection has made me a very sad and lonely little girl, and I’d been acting like one, dragging my battered heart around and begging someone, anyone, to tell me it is worth something.

Shhhhh why are you so loud

Because . . . how can love be a mistake?” A warm tear runs down my face as I finally look up at him. “Even if it’s not enough, if it’s more trouble than it’s worth, if it does me more harm than good, even if everyone I give myself to denies me, I refuse to believe it’s a mistake.”

“Sometimes . . . s-sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever grow up enough to know the difference between what I romanticize and what’s real.”

“There’s something you need to know.” He swallows, his frame rattling as he covers my hand on his chest, the beat beneath quickening, smashing against my palm as if trying to break free. “Your heart is not your weakness, Cecelia. It’s mine.”

I’m falling in love with my enemy.

“We can never be,” he says softly from where he sits. “I know.”

Tortured eyes meet mine, and I see his defiance, not against me, but against the stars lining up against us. Utter fucking disaster. “I don’t want to fucking leave. I don’t want to argue. I don’t want to hate myself. I don’t want to blame you. I’m tired of being angry at them, but damn them and . . . damn you, Cecelia, you were never supposed to know them, you were never”—his

“Yours. I was always supposed to be yours,” I say as he nods and crushes me with his kiss.

“I’m losing my fucking mind”—he narrows his eyes at me—“and you’re the reason.”

“Get out of my head.” “Gladly, it seems to be a scary place today.

“Twenty minutes ago, you knew all too well who you belong to, and with and you still do. Tell me I’m a fool to believe it.” “You said we can never be.” He presses in. “We. Fucking. Are.”

It strikes me then that I’ve never known all- consuming love until this day, until him, and I’m positive I will never know it like that again. I found my truth in love just seconds before it was ripped from me. A curse, a damning fate, to be in love with a man I was supposed to view as my rival who instead stole my heart. And he’s just destroyed any trust I might have had for him by laying down all of his cards, and only because his hand was forced.

This time it surprises me how effortless it is to check out.

Nor did I think they would push back over a couple of tires. Okay, a lot of tires. Every tire in the parking lot. Tires that will cost them a small fortune to replace. In the grand scheme of things, it was a psycho ex -girlfriend move.

Girl, are you telling me to go slash his tires???? Because i will! (i wont lmao)

“I just want to leave now.” I do my best to control the shake in my voice as a tear spills over. “C-can I please just go home?”

“We love rainy days, don’t we, baby?” Dominic’s voice drifts up as he takes a step toward Matteo.

don’t want to be anywhere in a world where Dominic doesn’t exist.

“I’ll find you again. I’ll find you in my dreams. We’ll have so many rainy days. I’ll find you—”

I’m mourning a future I can no longer allow myself to have.

No matter how much they proclaimed to care for me, I was used by the men in my life in an inexcusable way.

Because no matter how much I resent them at times, I was lucky in a way few get lucky. I was loved in a way few get loved. So, naturally, it forever changed me.

“You love my opposition.” “You’re the only woman in the world who’s good at making me really angry.”

“But in the spirit of full disclosure, you should know that every time I look at you, Cecelia, I want your attention, your lips, your tongue, your body. You have infected me with your sickness, and now I’m an addict too.”

But somewhere deep down, I had hoped he would come for me. My twenty-year-old heart probably would have forgiven him. And the kicker is . . . if he had come back to me, I would have fought him, more furiously than I ever had.

But it’s my twenty-six-year-old heart who never got an explanation, nor an apology, and will never forgive him.

Dude, stop saying everything i feel/think

He never came after me because he had again banished me.

He's a bitch - Huda