Flawed (Gamer Girls, #1)

by Auryn Hadley

The first tear leaked out. It was always the first one that caused the problem because, after that, the rest knew which way to go.

"Because this shit fucking world keeps trying to rip me apart and make me dissolve into nothing, and I've never met anyone else who can understand the way I have to fight that every single fucking day. Except you."

She wasn't asking about taking it home. She wasn't asking about curling up with it at night. She'd just asked him to make sure it got into her coffin.

"Forever and almost always."

Everyone knows pain. We are not meant to carry it forever. We were never meant to hold it so closely, so be certain in the belief that what pain belongs to now will belong soon to then. That when someone asks you, "how was your day," realize that for some of us – it's the only way we know how to say, "Be calm. Loosen your grip, opening each palm, slowly now – let go."

That was why he and Dez were different. They knew the rules were a lie. He was scared to be alone; she was scared to be with people. He felt like he'd fade away if he wasn't touched; she felt like she'd be smothered out of existence if she was. He'd wanted so badly to die and make all the pain end; she still did. Everyone knew pain, but some lived closer to it than others.

"Chance, I'm trying to get sober." "Dez, I'm trying to fall in love."

Being flawed isn't about pity. It's about living with something locked inside you that you don't want the world to see."

"And she is not her past. It shaped her, but it doesn't own her."