The Perfect Marriage (Perfect, #1)

by Jeneva Rose

It burns, but a good type of burn, like the small fires we sometimes need in our lives to remind us that we are alive.

He playfully pats my butt as if I was running into a football game.

A secluded cabin on Lake Manassas surrounded by woods in Prince William County, Virginia,

Note to self: look into this area

The open concept living area has large bay windows overlooking the lake and a massive fireplace adorned with various colored stones. A huge bearskin rug completes the sitting area and serves as a central point that separates it from the kitchen.

I would love a house like this

I’ve always felt like Sarah was taking on the world, while I was just struggling to live in it. That’s the woman she wanted to be, a powerhouse, a one-woman show where I just happen to be cast as an extra.

That’s the funny thing about dreams. You always eventually wake up from them.

Sarah has her work, and I have mine, and there was a time when we had each other, but that time has passed.

bedroom eyes.

Kelly gives me the love that Sarah can no longer. They both complete me.

Two women trying to make it in a man’s world. We work twice as hard as our male counterparts to make it just an inch ahead of them.

She makes me so goddamn miserable, but so blissful at the same time. I hate her as much as I love her. Does she know? Does she even care?

I want love. I want a family. I want meaning.

“I just have this theory that animals and babies are the knick-knacks of our lives. Nice to look at and fun to collect, but they serve no real purpose.”

It’s the only reason the human race isn’t extinct, because people with no purpose breed,”

“I always test people. If they can’t handle me at my worst, they don’t deserve me at my best,”

All this time, I’ve been several chapters ahead of her, and now she’s caught up.

I’ve always believed the eyes cannot lie.

They hold the truths we are unable or unwilling to speak.

She stared back into my eyes, and I like to think she recognized the hurt and loneliness in mine.

Like heroin, she was addicting right from the first taste, the first high—and I never came down from that high—until today.

He makes me feel less angry. He makes me feel like everything is going to be all right at this moment. He makes me feel like things can get better.

It’s still bright out, but I don’t care. I close the curtains and make the house as dark as I can manage with only the fireplace providing any light. It’s how I feel right now—dark, hopeless, and just waiting for my time to pass.

Innocent people do go to prison, and I won’t be one of them.

“I just don’t understand why you’re challenging me. I thought you were my friend.”

“I am, and that’s exactly why I’m challenging you. I don’t want your personal involvement to cloud your judgment.

Even

when you have nothing left in your life, hope is the one thing that can never be taken away.

I’ve been betrayed by nearly everyone in my life.

didn’t know love from my mother, at least not since my father passed. He was the glue that kept us all together, the one who encouraged me in life and brought joy to my mother.

she abandoned me emotionally when I needed her the most, but she also showed weakness in ways that I no longer could feel sympathy for but rather anger and embarrassment.

You are weak and pathetic, and you can’t even keep it together for the two of us.

My mother made me wise, made me independent, made me learn how to fight for myself.

I know what you’re thinking. Did I do everything in my power to save Adam? To try and save the man who ruined our marriage. I ask myself the same question sometimes. And the only answer I have ever come up with is that I did what I had to do. To survive.

My hair is a shimmery golden blond, long and down. I wear it down these days and let it be free. It’s how I try to live my life too, uninhibited, and less rigid. I guess some things do change after all.

From now on, everything in my life is going to be beautiful.

I had hoped my last thoughts would be of the life I lived or the people I loved. Kind of poetic in a way that the struggling writer can’t even think of a few good last words to say. The only thoughts swirling inside my brain are of my own demise. Something doesn’t feel right.

Timing is everything and I timed everything out perfectly.

We decided to kill Kelly and frame Adam. After all, they did have it coming.

Another small glimmer of hope that would make him erratic and irrational.

But most importantly, I wanted to remind Adam that he could only trust one person and that was me.

That’s the thing about relationships, you never really know what’s going on in them, unless you’re a part of them.

We all have our own truth and everything outside that truth is just a story.

A divorce would have given Adam half of everything I own. He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve me. I vowed to never be like my mother. Allowing any man to take what I had earned and what I had worked hard for would make me just as weak as she was. In the end, Adam got the one thing he did deserve.

I vowed when I found out I was pregnant that I would never make any of the same mistakes my mother made.

She was killing herself a little every day, I just helped speed up the process.