Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2)

by Tahereh Mafi

“Dear, sweet, beautiful girl,”

hell is empty and all the devils are here Yes. Interesting. Yes. Sure. I think I need to lie down. “Books,” he’s saying, pulling his boxer-briefs up and rezipping his pants, “are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them. Tattoos, for example, are very hard to forget.” He buttons his button. “I think there’s something about the impermanence of life these days that makes it necessary to etch ink into our skin,” he says. “It reminds us that we’ve been marked by the world, that we’re still alive. That we’ll never forget.”

“You are confident,” he says to me. “You’re stubborn and resilient. So brave. So strong. So inhumanly beautiful. You could conquer the world.” I actually laugh, look up to meet his eyes. “I cry too much. And I’m not interested in conquering the world.”

“I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend,” he says. “The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body, Juliette—”

“The truth,” he says, “is a painful reminder of why I prefer to live among the lies.”