The Amendment (The Arrangement, #2)

by Kiersten Modglin

“Because if you ever lie to me again, the next body in our freezer will be yours.”

We’d been in crisis mode for so long, sometimes I wondered if we even remembered how to be normal.

“You were right. You are a monster.”

“But you’re my monster. And as long as you’re completely honest with me, I’m not going anywhere.”

Normal doesn’t exist and it never has. There are just these periods where things feel safe and calm, and then, long before we’re ready, everything’s torn apart and we call it change. We look back at our lives and wonder when it all changed, but the truth is…the better question is, when didn’t it? Because we’re always changing. Life is always changing. It’s the rarer moments where things are still.

I could fix it. I was a fixer, after all.

“Instead of sleeping with other people, I want to help you kill other people.”

“I think sometimes people show us who they are, and we have to choose whether or not we’re going to believe them. There’s personality, Annie, and there’s human nature. Some things can be changed. Some people can change. But some things, some things are so deep down at the core of who we are, no matter what the people around us do, nothing will change us. If Pete has shown you who he is, you have to decide if you can live with it. If he’s unwilling to change, you have to decide if you’re going to change. Because if you’re both unhappy, one of you has to.”

Conversation over. Except it was far from over. And we were far from fine.

Sorry, honey. We’re in this together, remember? After all, rules are rules. Guess I had just one more secret. How’s that for full circle?