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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Selena .
Read between
January 17 - January 20, 2022
The way they think they’re saving you, but they’re destroying you. The way they keep you from saving her after you destroyed her.
All along, I thought I was biding my time until I broke her. But she broke me first.
And she didn’t just play me. She didn’t just make me fall for her. She made me believe that someone could do the same in return.
I broke her on purpose, but piece by piece, I’m the one falling to pieces.
“No one here knows me,” he says quietly, sliding onto the seat next to me. “Except you.”
“You need to get some help, Harper.” “Like you did?” “You helped me,” he says quietly.
“No,” he says, pressing his face into my hair. “I’m not leaving, Harper. Not again. Not ever.”
“Trust me,” he says. “I wouldn’t give trash more than an hour of my time. And you, Appleteeny, have taken an entire year of my life. I wouldn’t be here right now if you weren’t worth it.”
“You matter, Harper.” His eyes burn with that dark intensity that’s more dangerous than the fury or the emptiness. “You matter to me.”
“Preston,” I cry, rushing forward and throwing myself into his arms so hard he stumbles backwards a step, a surprised little laugh escaping him as I crush him in my tightest embrace. I didn’t realize how much I wanted him here until this moment, until I feel his familiar body against mine, inhale the sharp, clean scent of him. “You came,” I say, my voice catching, my eyes aching with tears even as I pull back, laughing a little. I touch his scratchy chin, not quite believing it. “You never go anywhere.” “You said you needed a scholarship.”
Despite everything, despite us both playing a game all along, both seeing how far the other could go before we broke, we were happy.
We may have been toxic as fuck together, but for those brief months when we were together, we were happy. I can’t remember ever feeling better than I did when I was in his arms, or on my knees in front of him, or just lying under the bridge with him, my head pillowed on his arm, talking. For a girl like me, that’s as close to happy as I will ever come, and I didn’t even realize it at the time.
His touch is a lie.
“I want to kiss you,” he says, resting his forehead on mine. “I want to kiss you until you’re so wet I can smell it. I want to taste your black cherry tongue and hear you moan.”
“I want to kiss you here.” He brushes his knuckles down the side of my neck. “And here.” His fingertips skim over my collarbone before his hand drops to my hip. “Stop,” I whisper. “And here.” “Royal…” He runs his thumb along the inside of my hipbone, in my ticklish spot. “I want to kiss you right here until you lose patience like you always do and push my head between your legs like a greedy bitch. I want to lick your cunt until you gush in my mouth the way you used to. I want to lick up every drop and start all over from here.”
“It’s fine,” I say, sliding my arms around him from behind. It’s for show, but I don’t miss the way he tenses in my arms or the way my stupid heart swells until it aches at the familiarity of his body against mine, the casually intimate gesture I used to do as a matter of course instead of faking it for status. “I’m fine. Go.”