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And you could stand to be a little more grateful.” He frowns. “Grateful to whom?” “To me. For trying to be easy.” “Easy?” An amused huff. “You haven’t been easy a second in your life.”
“Tell me why the hell you’re crying, so we can establish that it’s just a load of inconsequential shite, and I can hang up the call with a clean soul.”
“I don’t know what the hell to do with this information.” “That’s the exact point I was trying to make, you prickhead.”
“Don’t,” he says. So sharp that my eyes let go of Antares to find his. “Don’t put yourself in the same category as Minami, or Avery, or Tamryn. You do not belong there.”
“Some people just like to see the world burn, Minami,” he says.
“My father is ill.” She gasps. “I’m so sorry.” “You should be, as it appears that he’ll pull through. The devil really does look after his own.”
Paul is not worthy of cleaning the fucking soles of your shoes with his tongue.”
“What’s up?” he asks, groggy. “Were you sleeping?” “I was, yes. Because it’s five in the morning.” “Why did you pick up, then?” “Because you called.”
Because one day, Conor Harkness decided that he wanted someone to know him. And he chose me.
“You okay?” I ask, cautious. “Yeah.” A deep inhale. “Yeah. I just wanted to listen to you exist.”
“Why do I have to put it on?” He casts a level look in my direction. “Because if we end up in an accident, I’d rather die than survive you.”
“You’re still the best boy!” “Is he, though?” Conor asks from my side. “The best boy got himself stranded.” “I said best, not smartest.
“I’m going first. Make sure you stay close.” “Why?” “So I can drown you, of course.”
“I doubt that there’s anything in the entire universe that would make me think less of you, Maya.”
Those floor-to-ceiling bookshelves you wanted in your room?” “The ones you put up while I was on vacation with Jade? Even though you’d told me that I was smart enough to figure out how to put together my own furniture, and that I couldn’t pick and choose the gender roles that I wanted to reject, or automatically assume that you’d do shit for me because I’m a woman?” “What you said, Maya, was ‘I’m just a girl, I don’t know how to use power tools, you have to do this for me,’ which I refused to entertain, and…It wasn’t me.”
“I love you. And you are my best friend.”
“I have never wanted anything as desperately, as ungovernably, as persistently as I want you. Not a single goddamn thing. Not my dead mother back. Not revenge. Not the well-being of the people I love. Not professional success, not even my own happiness. Absolutely nothing has consumed me as mercilessly as you have.”
“I said that it would pass for you, Maya. I was never under the illusion that it would so much as fade, for me. And I was prepared for it.”
“Do you want me to leave?” “It would be best if—” “Not the question I—” “No, Maya. I never want you to be anywhere but with me.”
“Since the first day I met you, you have been the best thing in my life. And you weren’t even in it.”
“Really? That’s the line, Conor?” He groans. “It’s the Catholic guilt.”
I’m not yours to set free! I am free, and I have chosen you freely over and over again.
“Thank you. For not giving up on me, even though I had given up on me.”
Maybe he was the love of my life. No, I am certain that he was. But happy endings are not the rule. Sometimes you give it your all, and things still don’t turn out well.
“I love you, Maya. And no. It’s never going to pass.”
“I’d never said it before.” “It was not your first time saying ‘I love you.’ ” “No.” Conor smiles in the slow morning light. “It was my first time meaning it.”
“I’m saying that I already know I’m in love with you, and that I have little interest in being apart from you. I don’t need you in small doses, because…I want it all.”
Maya, I will take as much or as little of you as you’ll let me have.
The ring, it can just mean…It can just be a reminder for you that I love you. That I want to marry you. That I’m a constant, never-ending yes.
