The Sweetest Oblivion (Made, #1)

by Danielle Lori

“Sometimes the cheapest things are the most valuable.”

“There are three sides to every story. Mine, yours and the truth.”

And who told him he could hold my hand, pull me around, and make me feel warm all over?

I was a moth moving toward the flame, until I stood close enough for my wings to ignite.

Had only shared my cigarette with her just so I could see her lips where mine had been.

I hated when someone told me to smile, as if a smile of mine belonged to them and not me.

I didn’t know what that was, why it felt like I had a continual live wire under my skin in his presence, but I didn’t want to analyze it. I knew it wasn’t a good thing. Anything that stops your breath can’t be good for you.

Why must everything have a happily ever after? Aren’t the most memorable, poignant moments of history tragic? I had always appreciated sad endings. I was a realist, not a romantic.

She called it platonic, while I had been one second from losing my grasp on self-control and touching her everywhere she’d let me.

She was supposed to be wallpaper, but I couldn’t stop my gaze from finding her whenever she was in the room.

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched—they must be felt with the heart.” —Helen Keller

A certain reality settled on me: I didn’t have a spellbinding love story to bring to this world. The honest truth was, I only forced myself to enjoy tragic endings because I knew mine wouldn’t be far apart.

I wanted Elena Abelli, and starting a feud just so I could have her was beginning to sound less and less like a bad idea every time she was near.

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” —Marilyn Monroe

“I swear to God, Elena, if I find out you’ve let some man touch you, I will deliver his hands to you in a box.” I swallowed. “And I do not. Fucking. Bluff.” He slammed the door behind him.

“I can resist anything except temptation.” —Oscar Wilde

the heart only took chances the brain would not.

Elena’s soft laughter filtered through the room, hitting me in the chest.

Elena Abelli was my vice, and fuck if I’d let it kill me.

And I knew it like the sky was blue, he’d been thinking about me.

“Hit a woman in front of me and you won’t be alive to do it again,” Nico growled.

My heart would fall for him and he would crush it beneath his feet. I could live a loveless life. I couldn’t survive a broken one.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I said I’ll never hurt you, Elena, but if I find out you’ve touched another man, there is nothing in this world that could save him.”

I wanted to know what he did last night. What his middle name was. Who he had loved or who he did. I wanted to know everything, and that made my chest ache with the inevitable break.

“There’s nowhere you could go that I couldn’t find you.”

During his silence, I realized I liked his voice. I wanted to know what he would say.

“I don’t need to keep you a secret, Elena,” he said, going to tend to his pan on the stove. “I just don’t have the patience to listen to what people think I should do with what’s mine.”

I was observant as a child. I wanted to analyze the world and decipher its meaning, but what I found was myself as a little girl standing in front of a mirror where a loveless, empty life stared back. The truth was, I was a liar. I’d always been a romantic. So deep a romantic that the thought of not finding my own love story felt like I once again

I watched him, was fascinated in a way by the few words that he spoke, and I took a mental image when he glanced my way and the sunlight hit him just right. Pierced with that dark, acquisitive gaze of his, something warm started in my chest, and as the day went on it spread further through my being until it was so interwoven I’d never get it out.

It was eleven a.m. on a Sunday when I realized I wasn’t only attracted to my fiancé. I was, with a madness that ached, completely and utterly infatuated with him.

I would rather never fall in love at all than to experience it unrequited.

I never let myself hate because I loved to live. But right now, I could say I hated something. Two things. That goddamn ring and the man who gave it to her. Hatred fucking burned, like inhaling mace, getting punched in the throat, and being stabbed simultaneously.

before I did something stupid, like demand she forget every man she’d ever met but me.

And I had a bad, bad feeling that if this girl used the word please, I would give her anything she wanted.

He was comfort, security, and need, all in one. It had a name. Home.

“A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.”

His heartbeats raced for me.

I didn’t know what to do with this woman, but I did know I was keeping her. Every time I saw her, my blood burned hotter, searing the word mine into my chest.

Damn, she was too beautiful. It fucking hurt to look at her.

I laughed. I was pretty sure I’d rather cut off my left arm than ever hurt her, but fuck if I was going to let him know she was my biggest weakness.

“You make me fucking crazy.”