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There is a reason that all things are as they are. —Bram Stoker, Dracula
“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.
“Save your strength, Winter Ashby. You will need it.”
Life felt like hell because we expected it to feel like heaven.
“The queen is the most powerful piece on the board,”
“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.”
and you’d rip out your own hair because animals do insane things when they’re caged for too long.”
“You need a proper man,”
“Someone who walks upright and can run a tight ship. Someone who’s a team player in Thunder Bay. Someone who can make you listen. And someone”—his tone turned darker as he stopped right in front of me—“who’s not going to question too hard when not all of his children look like him.”
“Not every woman in this world will be for your personal amusement,”
“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.
“You were my heroin once upon a time,”
The secret of life that everyone knew and everyone forgot was that we weren’t alone. We thought we were unique. We thought we were the first. No one has been through what I’ve been through. No one else is feeling this. No one knows what it’s like to be me. This is the first time anyone has endured what I’ve endured, right?
“You could never not draw attention,” he finally said. “And it has nothing to do with you being blind.”
“It is an art how quickly you can make everyone want to kill you.”
“The only thing you’re proof of is that not all males grow up to be men.”
that’s what red feels like. Anger and fury and heat and need so strong you’re a fucking animal, Winter. It’s primal.”
The only bright side I could find in possibly never feeling him again was that your first love was a learning experience. Or so my mom said. They’re not the ones you marry, she told me. They’re the ones who break you, so you can rebuild yourself better. Stronger.
“Why bother with her when there’s you?” he taunted. “I like you.”
“The only part of me anyone can ever hurt is my heart, and there’s no one on the planet my heart is more out of reach of than you,”
“I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. You might just be my type, girl.”
“Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, Winter Ashby, because we’re not done,”
“If I hear anyone touched you, I will crack his fucking skull.”
And I hated that I’d missed him. I hated that so fucking much.
How I still felt the parts about him I loved when I didn’t know it was him I was with. How his arms around me still felt protective and how his whispers reminded me of when I loved the feel of them all over my neck.
I hated him. He was everything bad that happened to me. But he was the only time—other than dancing—that I felt alive, too. Being with him was like dancing. Dancing with death.
Jesus Christ. She was beautiful.
And mine. All mine whether she fucking liked it or not. She’d do this for me. Only for me from now on.
“You don’t care about me!” “I would kill for you,”
People were priceless. The things we told ourselves to justify giving up and falling in line like we had to accept anything less than what we wanted.
“I’m sixteen, and I’ve never been kissed.”
“I waited for you.” “Winter . . .” “I waited for you,”
“And you’re mine, not theirs.”
“You want to dance?”
“I’ll get you anything you want.” “How are you going to do that?” “I get anything I want,”
when I was around her, I just wanted to stay around her.
I wanted to be with her. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to keep playing games with her.
“I don’t know, baby,” I told her. “Just don’t let me go, okay?”
“I want you to be my first,”
“even if you’re going to disappear on me again, I want it to be you.”
“You. I want you.”
“I love how the world looks when I’m with you. I want it to be you.”
I didn’t want her first time. I wanted every time. But I didn’t want to love her, either. I didn’t want it to feel like this. It couldn’t feel like this.
“I don’t do gentle,” I said. “But God, baby, you are tearing me apart right now.”
“You’re not making me dirty. There is no you. There’s no me. This is us. Just us.”
“My kind of fun has a price, remember?”
With all the men in the world, why did I hate myself so much that he was the only one, in the heat of the moment, I wanted?
