When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys, #2)

by Emma Scott

Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final —Rainer Maria Rilke

He pulled me out of the lake and breathed life into me…

“His eyes are an alcoholic’s memoir without the wisdom of having hit rock bottom. He’s still falling.”

The conversion therapy’s cruelest lesson wasn’t taught in the hardest moments—the night marches, the beatings, or even the lake. The cruelty was in the words fed to us, a steady diet of self-hate. A mainline of loathing and unworthiness injected directly into our bloodstream every day. Long after the bruises have faded, the poison lingers, circulating through every part of me and rotting everything I touch.

When River tells me he loves me, the poison whispers that he’s lying. When I want to say it back, the poison tells me my words aren’t worth the breath it takes to utter them. The poison commanded me to run away, and I did, even though I’d have given anything to stay.

“Thank you for loving me when I didn’t.”