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February 14 - February 20, 2021
Heart failure. The organ I would follow anywhere—without question, without reasoning. When lost or confused, it was our hearts we were told to trust completely. The speaker of desires, deliverer of feelings, and giver of hope. Yet it still had the audacity to fail us.
“Stop,” I gritted through clenched teeth, tears pooling and shaking in the rims of my eyes. I tried to shake my head from his grasp. Julian had turned into something else. Something screaming. Something raw. Something candid and cruel. The shape of a passionate shadow, the color of cutthroat. Was it something I said? “Why are you doing this?” “Me? You’re doing this to yourself,” he insisted, breathing hard, chest beating against my back. “And it’s sad. Acceptance is a ten-letter prison we’re all eager to be locked in.” His glossy eyes wild and alive. “You let everyone else tell you who you
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“People will always have something to say, but it’s your fault you become it. At least you can fight back. Some of us don’t have that luxury.”
She looked at me, and it drove me crazy, it drove me calm.
I was at peace when I didn’t deserve it.
Hate me, moon girl. Hate me like the rest of them. Hate me as I hate me. Because if you don’t, one of us will kill you, and it will probably be me.
Monsters could have hearts too, and the truth was, we had a heart just like every other living thing. But we couldn’t let anyone get close enough to feel it, see it, take it, shape it. We had to push them away to protect them. Because when people get close, they die.
Julian Blackwell was cursed, and now, so was I.
As I stood solid, appearing to be unbroken by the news, I was fucking falling apart on the inside.
“I’ve tried to ignore it, but I can’t. No matter what they say, you were always mine, and you always will be.”
and my heart felt his. “They can take parts of me, but I refused to let them have all of me.” “Then, why me?”
Yes, with Julian, I loved life because he made me feel undead. The girl who looked like a ghost, talked to ghosts, raised by ghosts, he made this girl feel like something worth looking at, someone who was wanted.
I wasn’t hiding because I was ashamed of her. I could never be ashamed of her. Fallon and me, we were the same.
“And what are the reasons, Beck? Because I made a blood-pact with you all? Because of the Order? Because of the curse? Because I have to be loyal to everyone in this fucking town except her? How am I supposed to be with her if I’m not allowed to? The deeper we go, the harder it will be, and where will that get us? It’s already fucking hard enough. And worse, what if I kill her? I barely made it out after Johnny died, but with her? No, I wouldn’t be able to come back from it.” My chest shook, and I dragged in a steadier breath. “Everything’s eventual—” “And if it bleeds, it suffers,” Beck
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I stood there for a long time, watching the girl who looked as if she had the moon tucked under her heart and the galaxy woven into her soul.
Fallon Grimaldi was in my arms, and it turned me into a man who wasn’t cursed or damned. It just turned me into a man, the only thing I ever wanted to be.
She cares for me? And if I hadn’t known before, I knew at that moment—I would have done anything for her. If she asked for my heart, I’d rip it out of my chest. If she wanted a choice, I’d give her the freedom, even if it meant not choosing me. I’d do anything. It was terrifying.
“I don’t want to be anywhere where you’re not.”
Whether in this life or our reincarnated one, it would always be her. As it always had been.
“I love you, Julian Blackwell,” she whispered, her gaze locked on the house before us. “Nothing’s changed. It’s always been you. Every time.”
“Death isn’t the end. What was, will be again.”
Around my feet, the apple peel spelled out one word. Real.
I would go to him, and I would love him. All of him. Over and over … on repeat. Because I was certain all these things he was made of were the very parts missing in me.
“They’re all liars,” I whispered. “But we’re not. This isn’t a lie. This is real. We—” I pushed my hand through whatever magical force he had against me, grabbed the back of his neck, and pulled his forehead to mine. I looked into his eyes. “We are real.”
Do not fall in love with the moon, they said. I fell in love anyway, and they would all laugh. They could not see her beauty. No one would believe me if I said the moon breathed life into me. That it was here, inside her, where I found myself again.
“You’re beautiful. Have I ever told you that?” I shook my head. Julian blinked. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
“To me, you are beautiful. And not just tonight. All the time. I should have told you that a long time ago.”
“It happened slowly and then all at once for me, you know.” My back fell against the stone wall of the tunnel. “The way I feel about you, it runs deep—an unheard of deep, blue thing. So blue, it’s black like the color of a ravens wing … In an ocean beneath an ocean on top of another ocean. Where you don’t know which way is up or down. No shallows, no bottom. That’s how deep, and it scares me sometimes. But then you’re there too, and we’re floating together in that deep place. And it’s peaceful there … quiet.” I’d lost myself in her eyes, and I hadn’t realized the rest of me stood paralyzed. I
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… I, Julian Blackwell, had found a love that was deeper than love, and I loved in a way as if it were all that I’d known.
“Everyone told you to stay away, but you didn’t. You went … against … the Order. And you still came for me. How … is that … not free will?” “That’s cute,” I told her. “You thinking I have any sort of power.” Her eyes darted between me and the trees in our path. “What … are … you saying?” “I’m saying, when it comes to you, I have no will. You have complete control over me. What’s cute is that you are oblivious to it.”
A phenomenon that doesn’t happen very often, and one that comes when you least expect it. It’s one of those unexplainable feelings that you have to experience for yourself. Proof that we are so much stronger than we believe.”
“You’re the only thing I’m good at. And protecting you was the one thing I could do to show you—”
“To show me what?” she asked in a shaky whisper. Our glances battled back and forth, until tears arose, and we found ourselves crying. “To show you that I chose you. That I fucking love you!”
“My god, Fallon, I’m in love with you. Always have been. And I’m certain that I loved you a thousand times before as I do now, and I hope to love you a thousand times again. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.” I threw my hands up at my sides, taking another step forward.
“If you jump off that cliff, Fallon, I’m jumping with you.”
