Shadow Me (Shatter Me, #4.5)

by Tahereh Mafi

In fact, I hope you don’t. I wouldn’t want you to know how I feel right now. I wouldn’t wish that for you.”

Winston’s been in love with Brendan for a long time, but I’m the only one who knows about it.

I’m so happy for my friends. I love them, even when they piss me off. I care about them. I want their joy. But it still hurts a little when it feels like, everywhere I look, everyone seems to have someone. Everyone but me.

Instead, I’m a big, raw, bleeding heart, and I spend my days pretending not to notice that I want more. That I need more. Maybe it sounds weird to say, but I know I could love the shit out of someone. I feel it, in my heart. This capacity to love. To be romantic and passionate. Like it’s a superpower I have. A gift, even.

They clearly have crazy chemistry. Their relationship never made a lot of sense to me—I couldn’t understand how someone like Warner could be an emotional partner to anyone, much less someone like Juliette: a girl who eats, sleeps, and breathes emotion. I rarely saw him emote anything. I worried that Juliette was giving him too much credit, that she put up with too much of his bullshit in exchange for—I don’t even know what. A sociopath with an extensive coat collection?

It doesn’t seem right that so much horrible shit should be, like, allowed to go down in such a short period of time. There should be a fail-safe in the universe somewhere, something that automatically shuts down in the event of extreme human stupidity.

Because it’s not the pain that’s unendurable. It’s the hopelessness. It’s the hopelessness that makes you reckless.