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

by Brit Benson

To rock bottom, the journey back to the top, and growth.

“Come on. Ruined lives? Bloodshed? You really think a relationship should be that hard?” “No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.” -Veronica Mars, 2x20

I’d stand here locked in this stare off forever, if it meant I got to keep her like this. Not cold and detached. Not blank. Real.

the only way Lennon and I can exist in the same space is if our past is minimized to something tolerable. Forgettable, even. Anything more, and we’re match-lit gasoline.

I bet her teeth are gritted, too. There you are, Lennon. There you fucking are.

The moment she crosses the doorway, I can feel her. It’s like the air changes. Everything smells like roses, now. It’ll be permanent. Mother fuck. When the fuck did she change back? Vanilla was easier. Roses? Mother. Fuck.

We are homesick most for the places we have never known. It’s a Carson McCullers quote, from a short essay she wrote in 1940.

Lennon will always want Macon. That’s why I can’t be her anymore.

“Je suis désolé, ma soeur,” I say. “Faisons comme si tu n’étais pas une salope. Si cela vous aide à mieux dormir.”

Claire can choke on a dick for all I care.

I saw the good in Macon back then—I might have been one of the few who did—but the good was always buried beneath attitude and drugs and self-loathing. I never thought I’d get to see it laid out so blatantly on his surface.

I want to feel something other than sorrow. I want to feel something other than this hollow, paralyzing ache. I want to feel nothing.

Her eyes are all fire, scathing with passion. My smirk grows. This is my Lennon. I knew she was still in there.

She’s heaven and she’s hell. She’s my reward and my punishment. She’ll ruin me again. I know it.

was impulsive. I was thoughtless. I didn’t take my time with her. I told myself if I ever got her back in my hands, I would make it last. I would make up for the time lost. Instead, I didn’t even take time to remove her clothes. I fucked her from behind, fully clothed, bent over my kitchen island. It was fucking hot, but from the way she’s acting, it was all wrong.

“Every single decision I’ve made over the last four years has been for you.”

He’s always put others before his own well-being. It’s what fueled his demons in high school. He’s always felt others’ pain more strongly than his own.

“What fucking universe are you living in? I was in rehab. I was getting clean so I could be good enough for you. But I got out and you hadn’t come back. You left me.”

“I fucking went to rehab for us,” he says, his voice shaking. “So I could love you right.”

“Fine?” he spits, his face twisted and his eyes ablaze. “You don’t want fine, Lennon. You want madness. You want fire. Anything less is a waste of time.”

“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 notice his hair curling slightly out the sides of his black backwards ball cap, and my heart kicks up a beat.

“Lennon, there is nothing you could possibly do to fall short of how I see you, because I see you just as you are.”

“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.”

“And because no one will ever love Lennon the way I do. I love all of her. Even the parts that she doesn’t show the world.” “But she shows you?” “Yes, sir, she does.”

“I’m so tired, Macon. I’m tired of hiding. I’m tired of fighting this. I’m tired of pretending it hasn’t always been you.”

“What is this?” I whisper. “What is this feeling? I feel like I’m drowning. Like I’m suffocating and you’re my oxygen.” He presses his forehead to mine, lips ghosting over my lips as he speaks. “I think it’s love.” I feel him smirk. “You get used to it.” Love. I think it’s love.

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.”

“I love you, Macon Andrew Davis, in this life and all the rest of them.

That’s the biggest reason I have to thank Paris. Lennon knows her talent now. She accepts compliments because she believes she’s worthy of the praise. She wasn’t like that before. I’ve got a list of things that make me grateful for Paris, even if it meant I had to lose Lennon for a while. In Paris, she blossomed. She grew into her independence. She mastered the use of her voice.