Make Me Sin (Bad Habit, #2)

by J.T. Geissinger

Because I can’t say anything nice about her. I can’t say anything nice to her. I can barely even look the woman in the eye. When I do, it gets hard to breathe. It gets hot, even if it’s freezing cold out. And suddenly, I feel like I’m ten years old again, on the last good day of my life, unwrapping the last Christmas present I’d ever get from my mother before she’s dead from the final bang of heroin that killed her, and I’m left alone in a ghetto brothel in southeast Saint Petersburg with nothing but a new toy drum and the clothes on my back.

Hope. Fuck you, hope. And fuck you, too, happiness. You’re both two-faced, lying bitches.

“We also knew Jeremy for months before we found out he was the one stealing all your underwear. And wearing it.”

“It’s like coming home to your own brightly lit house after wandering alone for years in the unwelcome dark.”

“Because you have a smile like a sunrise and eyes that could end all wars, and you have no idea, you have no fucking clue, that when you look at me, you’re looking at a dead man.”

“But mostly because you give me hope. You fucking haunt me with hope. And I can’t forgive you for that. Now get the hell out and don’t ever come back!”

Sometimes what looks like perfection is nothing more than a chocolate-dipped turd. And sometimes what you find in the gutter covered in mud that looks like a turd is really a diamond. A big old, chunky diamond that some other fool threw out because she couldn’t see that all it needed was a little TLC to make it shine.”

I’m darker. More dangerous. In fact, I’m capable of anything. Because now there’s something I’m willing to lie, cheat, steal, or die for to protect. Something I don’t want to live without. Or someone.