This Life and All the Rest (Next Life, #2)

by Brit Benson

Nothing has ever felt this good. No drug. No fuck. No cheap thrill. Nothing compares to Lennon, and it’s terrifying. She’s heaven and she’s hell. She’s my reward and my punishment. She’ll ruin me again. I know it.

“You’re mine,” he says, his voice full of conviction. “You’ve always been mine, and I’ve always been yours. That hasn’t changed. You belong with me.”

“Unforgiving. Difficult to master. You don’t want easy. You don’t want to erase your mistakes. You want to build on them and transform them into something beautiful. You’ve never wanted fine, Lennon. You want watercolors.”

“I never gave up on us,” he breathes out. “Even after you did, I didn’t. Because you belong with me, Lennon Capri. You always have and you always will.”

I’m always going to be an addict, and she’s always going to be my greatest temptation. The only addiction worth ruining myself for.

“I’m an addict, Astraea. I don’t know how to do anything small. I feel intensely. I want intensely. I crave intensely. For me, if it’s not a healthy obsession, it’s not love.”

I used to joke that my left side was unlucky. Broken wrist, broken femur, broken heart. But it turns out, Lennon likes the left side of the bed, and her head fits perfectly on the left side of my chest. My left side wasn’t unlucky. It was just waiting for Lennon. She heals my hurts. She strengthens me. I’m so stupidly in love with her.

“This life. The next life. Every life after that. I will love you in all of them, Lennon Capri. It doesn’t matter who you become or how you change. My soul will always belong to yours.”