Kill Switch (Devil's Night, #3)

by Penelope Douglas

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.

She’s lying. She’s doing what she’s supposed to do. I need her to hurt me, because pain covers up pain, and if I feel one, I won’t feel the other. I need her to push back down what tries to crop back up.

Everything she said, I made her say, because we could only feel one pain at a time, and maybe if I could pile on enough dirt, I’d get so buried I wouldn’t be able to think. And sometimes, I could overpower whatever was in my head by making my own victims.

“Because pain in the body quiets the pain in the head. It feels good, like a kill switch for your brain.

In fact, he was kind of an angel at the end. An angel with really black batwings. Psycho.

The world respected people who didn’t crave approval.

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. But I didn’t care. I wanted him to come back. I wanted him to hurt me. Just as long as he came back.

The things we told ourselves to justify giving up and falling in line like we had to accept anything less than what we wanted. Like fighting for your dream was a bad thing.

Then she wrapped her arms around me and jumped into my hold, forcing me to circle her waist to catch her. She smiled at me, and I held her like that, refusing to put her down as we just stayed there. But then, tightening her hold, she slowly brought herself in and hugged me. My chest swelled, aching like shit, and everything washed over me at once. Her smell, her warmth, her hair and body… My lungs caved, and I didn’t know why, but it felt so fucking good. I wrapped my arms around her like a steel band, almost feeling relief at holding something—or someone—for the first time in forever. When was the last time this happened? I never gave fucking hugs, except when Banks needed to talk me down, and that was more like hanging on to something than… Than actual affection. Than someone actually liking me. I wasn’t weak. I didn’t need this shit. But God, she felt good. “You dance?” she said in my ear. “No.” “You are right now,” she pointed out. And I stopped, realizing we’d been turning in a slow circle. “I think I like this dancing even more than ballet,” she told me. And the corners of my lips turned up in a smile. If only Kincaid could see me now…

“You’re not making me dirty. There is no you. There’s no me. This is us. Just us.”

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’d changed her forever. I’d bent and twisted and broken everything that made her the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.

He comes up to my side. “Why are you named Winter?” “It’s a poem by Walter de la Mare,” I tell him, still taking in the vast scenery as I recite part of it. “‘Thick draws the dark, And spark by spark, The frost-fires kindle, and soon, Over that sea of frozen foam, Floats the white moon.’” I have the whole thing memorized, but he’s probably not interested in hearing it. Any of my classmates who ask aren’t interested, either. “It describes winter,” I explain. “My mom said the poem made a cold and bitter season seem pretty. She said the beauty in life is what we live for, and it’s everywhere. You just have to look closer.”

He was still the boy, promising to kiss me again someday, and I was still her, never wanting to leave whatever little private world we created when we were together.