The Project

by Courtney Summers

“There are a lot of ways you can push somebody.”

and I only write what’s real and what’s true because the truth endures. The closer you get to the bone, the less you can be denied.

He’s just a man. As soon as I think it, anger courses through my veins, alighting my blood. It’s a wrath strong enough to make me want to disappear the space between us just to break him into pieces. That Lev Warren could do everything he’s done to me— And be only a man.

I think of a girl held hostage by both her grief and the people who took advantage of it. But where is the line between what circumstances have turned you into and who you choose to be?

Maybe she’s even more perfect because she’s free of all her mother’s mistakes and still young enough to grow up halfway decent in spite of the damage that’s already been done.

When his eyes finally meet Bea’s, she feels complete. She missed him, as they all did, but it’s different for her than it is for the rest of them. She does not live while he is gone. She only exists.

She thought of that as she spread her legs. Her body was ransom.

“If you tell a story—something real, something true—you get to be alive in other people. And writing feels like the most … the greatest chance I’ll ever have at being—alive.”

He exhales and steps back and everything that has ever been between us becomes nothing and everything else falls away. He presses himself against me, his mouth to my ear. “There is no flaw in you,” he whispers.