More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
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.”
Damon Torrance. The boy in the fountain.
He made himself the cure, which wouldn’t have been necessary if he hadn’t also created the disease.
I won’t pull away. Not ever.
As long as I was happy, I didn’t explain myself to anyone.
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.
“Fuck off.” “Well, top of the fucking morning to you, grouch,” Will said.
“What do you want?” “To make you smile.” I frowned. To make me . . . Jesus, fuck. I rolled my eyes. But just like that, I almost gave in. He had a gift for smoothing out my edges and really fucking quick, too. “Ha ha. I can hear you smiling.” I could hear his amusement. The laughter always present in his voice. “You can hear me smiling, huh?”
“I told you,” he pointed out. “We’re connected. It’s spiritual and shit.” I let out a little grin he couldn’t see. “I fucking hate you.”
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.
People assumed I behaved strictly on impulse, when actually, it required quite a bit of strategy to be this fucked up.
fucks were sometimes more fun than actual fucking.
“Acting like that time with her wasn’t the only fucking time I didn’t hate fucking.”
I wasn’t allowed to own firearms, being a felon and all, but oh well.
I hated him, and I would never forgive him, but maybe we had that one thing in common. We had to change to survive.
You’ll hate me. I’ll love you. We have to stop. Make me stop. I can’t. I won’t.
“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.”
“Your parents are bad,” he explained. “Your sister lacks any depth to be interesting, and I hate my house. It’s so dark there.” He paused, then continued. “It all fucking disappeared when you were dancing, though. It made the world prettier. I liked it.”
Exhaustion took over, and before I knew it, I was lost in it. In his warmth. In his arms. In the thunder of his heartbeat.
In fact, he was kind of an angel at the end. An angel with really black bat wings. Psycho.
Will was nice . . . until he wasn’t.
He was as guilty as sin.
He liked my dancing. He came to see if I would dance. It made the world prettier.
I hated him. I hated his vile words and his cigarettes and his arrogance and insanity in thinking he wasn’t responsible for anything. I hated how he grabbed and threatened and wouldn’t let me go. He had no right. And I hated that I’d missed him. I hated that so fucking much.
Being with him was like dancing. Dancing with death.
This was a game to him, and that was fine. He just wasn’t the only one playing anymore.
“I want her to want it,” I told Mikhail, his brown eyes looking up at me expectantly. “I want her to want me, to give me her heart, and be my soft, sweet, smiling Little Devil, clutching at me and unable to stop herself.”
“And if she wants me to touch her?” “It’s good to dream big, Damon.” I almost snorted, but I couldn’t contain my smile. “God, you’re like a female version of me,” I said. “It’s turning me on.” “Makes sense. You love yourself best.”
She was exquisite, and if she weren’t working against me, I’d think she was brilliant. Smart. Tough. Clever. And cold when she needed to be.
She pulled out a knife from somewhere and pressed the side of the blade into my neck. Jesus. She must be fun in bed.
Gabriel and Evans didn’t expect her to be in the car that day, but thank goodness she lived. Because I needed her and we had shit to do.
And all I knew in that moment was that I would fight for nothing more than to keep her like this. Innocent and happy and pure. Dancing in fountains.
She was mine. In our secluded, secret little world, she was mine.
“I don’t know, baby,” I told her. “Just don’t let me go, okay?”
We deserved one night. A few minutes or a few hours, just a little longer.
I wanted to feel her on me. Her skin on mine. I wanted every inch of her.
“You. I want you.” She peppered my neck with kisses. “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.
He wasn’t my enemy in here. He was my secret shame.
It was a prank you were never really too old for. I always dreamed of having this room in my house someday with splatters of red paint all over the walls and sheets, so I could dump drunk friends in there who would wake up in the light of day the next morning, shitting their pants at the massacre on the walls. The small delights in life.
“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’d changed her forever. I’d bent and twisted and broken everything that made her the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.
I loved him. This morning I loved him, and tonight I hoped he suffered unimaginably.
I loved the danger. The way he brought me to life.
I hated myself. Because I wanted him.
“Please.” Just leave. “Please.” Don’t touch me. Don’t hold me. Don’t take me in your arms.
I closed my eyes, not wanting to feel the shit I felt when I was nineteen when I let myself . . . want her. When I let myself fucking love her.
I wanted her. I broke last night because I didn’t want this. I just wanted that kid back who sat in my lap and drove my car. I made her happy. Me. And instead of sticking to the plan and making her hate that she wanted me, I hated that I still wanted her. None of it was a lie, except my name. It was real, and I wanted it again. I fucking loved her. Goddammit.
“It’s okay. I have you,” he says. “I promise.”
