More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Now . . .” my sister’s new husband whispered in my ear. “Now you belong to me.”
He made himself the cure, which wouldn’t have been necessary if he hadn’t also created the disease.
Life felt like hell because we expected it to feel like heaven. The quote I read years ago went something like that, but I never understood it. When you’re in the thick all your life, living in ways you eventually figure out no one else is, you learn to sleep well in heat and eat fire. Until one day it’s all you need.
Will, Michael, and Kai were my friends, and I’d walk through fire for any one of them. Will was the only one, though, who I was sure would walk through fire for me.
Six years ago, his little girl and I changed each other, and while I couldn’t change her back, I could certainly give her some new memories of me.
People assumed I behaved strictly on impulse, when actually, it required quite a bit of strategy to be this fucked up.
“There are people in the world who are destined to be played. Victims who wouldn’t be able to change their fate even if they went back and lived life over a thousand different ways.”
“Because pain in the body quiets the pain in the head. It feels good, like a kill switch for your brain.
“Acting like that time with her wasn’t the only fucking time I didn’t hate fucking.”
“You teach your daughter to hide in everyone else’s world,” I shot back, “and I’ll teach mine everyone else exists in hers. Go fuck yourself, and leave the kid alone.”
In fact, he was kind of an angel at the end. An angel with really black bat wings. Psycho.
“Sex doesn’t turn him on,” my friend continued. “Deviance is what he likes.
They all thought he was different with me, not realizing that I was just a different kind of kink to him.
No one knew the real tragedy, though. It wasn’t a matter of why he was different with me, but rather, now . . . I was different because of him.
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re alone,” he said. “Just as long as I have you to myself.”
“This is black,” he said. “Fear, falling, release. Excitement, risk, danger.”
“I may still want what I want, but I have no control over people who don’t want me to have it.”
When you find out who just fucked you, you’re gonna see plenty of red then.
He wasn’t my enemy in here. He was my secret shame.
“I told her that I wanted you,” I went on. “That you loved me, because there was no faking what happened in that fucking video, and I told her that I loved you, too, and I was sorry for stealing you the way I did, but it was the only way I could get close to you.”
I darted my eyes to hers. “Don’t let me go,” I told her, breathing hard. “No matter what you hear or what they say, don’t let me go.”
“Then you better hope I never get out.”
There is a reason why all things are as they are.
the beauty in life is what we live for, and it’s everywhere. You just have to look closer.”
“Something still beautiful, even after what I did to her.”
One kind of beauty was replaced with another.
“Because I was afraid of life without the hope of you to look forward to.”
“People are a blend of external and internal influences, not all controlled variables. Sometimes, just sometimes, we are who we are. Even in the sea, a snake is a snake.”
Red. Out of all the colors, I liked red the best.
