Stolen Crush (Lost Daughter of a Serial Killer, #1)

by C.M. Stunich

Murders and crushes. I think that’s how I’ll always remember high school.

That’s one of the most misused quotes in the entire world. The real quote is: the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. What it really means is that the family you choose is stronger than the family you’re born to.”

Is hating someone supposed to hurt this much? When I’m around Parrish, I burn. When I’m not, I feel like a pile of cold, wet ash.

The thing about doing that, about stuffing emotions away where you can’t see them, is that they fester and rot and morph into something so much worse. Monsters, that’s what they become. Fucking monsters.

The question is: do opposites really attract? Or can we fall for ourselves in somebody else?

As a rule, I don’t trust people with vanity license plates.

Opposites attract. Sometimes you start falling for the person you hate. Sometimes, you’re not even sure they are your opposite. Maybe they’re just so much like you that you can’t tell the difference anymore?

I’m officially in the drama club now, with the title of ‘extra hand’. That is, someone with absolutely zero skills but who’s allowed to participate anyway.

“It’s worth it, I promise,” he says, and then he takes my hand again and I know for a fact that if he didn’t belong to Maxine—the most important person in the world to me—that I would’ve fallen for him. Hard. Irreversibly. Inextricably.

That’s what I like about gaming, the ability to become someone or something else for a brief period of time. But in the end, reality always wins out. You can’t escape who you really are, can you?

The thing is … sometimes tropes are there for a reason. Because they’re fun. Because I’m getting a stupid ugly thrill out of having a crush on Parrish Vanguard.

Parrish squeezes me so tightly that I wonder if he ever plans on letting me go. I like it, feeling wanted that way.

But in that moment, even if I knew that, I’d still have stayed. Because love is a double-edged sword, and Parrish was my blade against everything in my life that wasn’t going the way I wanted it to.

“When love hits, it hits. Feelings are never wrong or right; they just are.”