Confess

by Colleen Hoover

“The painting was called When I’m with You, I Think of All the Great Things I Could Be If I Were Without You.”

Tonight, everyone’s focus is on my art, but my focus is on her. She’s the most interesting piece in this entire room.

“I think love is a hard word to define,” I say to her. “You can love a lot of things about a person but still not love the whole person.”

You drink to escape the emotional pain you’re in, and then the next day you do it all over again to get rid of the physical pain. So you drink more and you drink more often and pretty soon you’re drunk all the time and it becomes just as bad, if not worse, than the reality you were attempting to escape from in the first place. Only now, you need an escape from the escape, so you find something even stronger than the alcohol. And maybe that’s what turns alcoholics into addicts.

don’t, however, think she deserves better than me. I think she would be perfect for me and I would be perfect for her, but all the bad choices I’ve made in my life are what she doesn’t deserve to be a part of. So until I can figure out how to right all my wrongs, two days with her is all I’m really worthy of.

She smiles and squeezes my hand again, and I can’t fucking take how beautiful you look right now, Auburn. Free of worry, free of anger, free of guilt. The wind blows a piece of her hair across her mouth and she pulls it away with her fingertips. I’m going to paint this moment later.

“Sometimes we don’t get second chances, Owen. Sometimes things just end.” He winces. “We didn’t even get a first chance.”

“There are people you meet that you get to know, and then there are people you meet that you already know.”

I tilt my face toward her neck and inhale the scent of her. If her smell had a color, it would be pink. Sweet and innocent with a touch of roses.

Owen smiles, and I suddenly wish we were in the cleaning aisle, because someone is going to have to mop me up off this floor.

If I could feel for Trey even a fraction of what Owen makes me feel just standing across the room from me, I could probably make that relationship work without issue. But I don’t feel this with anyone else. Just Owen.

I don’t like his comment, no matter how much truth is in it. Sometimes the truth hurts, and having him lay it out like that makes it seem more black and white than it really is.

Her expression is exactly how I want to remember her. It’s not a happy expression. In fact, she looks kind of sad. I want to think it’s the same look she’ll get on her face every time she thinks about me. A look that reveals how much she misses me. Even when she shouldn’t.

Selflessness. It should be the basis of every relationship. If a person truly cares about you, they’ll get more pleasure from the way they make you feel, rather than the way you make them feel.

And this time, I don’t get lost in his touch. I don’t get lost in his kiss. I don’t get lost in how it feels when he pushes himself inside me. I don’t feel lost in him at all, because it’s the first time I’ve ever felt like someone truly found me.

The light is back in my father’s eyes. The light I haven’t seen since the night of our wreck. I don’t know how, but I know she had something to do with this. She’s like a light, unwittingly brightening up the darkest corners of a man’s soul.

I’ll love you forever. Even when I can’t.