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

by Brit Benson

“Not even gonna say hi, Len?” I drawl. “You fuck off to Paris and now you’re too good for your big brother?”

“Is that what you call bouncing on French dick in the City of Light?”

& here we goooooo

“I just find it interesting that perfect, wholesome Lennon Washington flunked out of art school to become a freeloading, directionless Frenchman’s whore.”

It’s the cruelest fucking smile I’ve ever seen on her pretty face.

“What happened to nice, polite Lennon Washington?” I scan my eyes over her body like she’s a stranger. She raises a brow and props her hand on her hip. “She’s dead,” she says flatly.

For the briefest moment, I was pulled back to my previous life. Younger, and more naïve, and stupidly in love with a boy who broke me over and over again.

He was the boy who broke me, and I was the girl who let him, because I thought I could fix him.

Macon Davis is of no importance to me anymore. He’s just some guy I used to know. My estranged stepbrother. An old relationship from an old life.

“You don’t have to thank me for showing up, Lennon. I had a friend pull me up off the bathroom floor when I needed it. I’m glad to be that friend for you.”

She used to be filled with fire, and now she’s ice.

I don’t know what it is about my left side, but it seems to take the bulk of my abuse. The wrist, the leg, the sleeve of tattoos. The heart.

The energy between us is so palpable. We’re either going to murder one another or fuck each other senseless. And then probably murder each other.

This Macon is still the same Macon who abandoned me. Cleaning him up and putting him in a starched uniform doesn’t erase the damage done.

Where did you go? Why wasn’t I enough? How could you give up on us?

I gave him everything once, offered my heart up on a silver platter, and what did that get me? A fast-track ticket to rock bottom. An emptiness I can’t seem to fill. A blackout date on the calendar, and a broken heart.

Messy eater.

Take the hint. You’re being pathetic and it’s embarrassing.

“I don’t care where you sleep, Claire. Just kick my shit out of your way, yeah? You’ve always been so good at that in the past.”

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

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

“I regret you,”

Any fucking time of day. Any day of the week. I don’t care if it’s fucking Christmas morning, and we’re eighty years old in a nursing home surrounded by grandkids. You call me. I’ll be there.

Loving Macon Davis destroyed me once. I won’t let it happen again.

“Let’s get one thing straight, Claire.” I speak slowly and annunciate my words. “Macon is no more my brother than you are my sister. And you will never be my sister.” I drag my eyes down her body and sneer. “Now fuck off.”

“The heart is a lonely hunter with only one desire! To find some lasting comfort in the arms of another's fire.”

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

“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.”

He lies and I listen because I want so desperately to believe him.

I can’t think straight around him. I never could. I cling to him when I should push him away. I say yes when I should say no. I forgive him and forgive him and forgive him, when all I should really do is forget him.

Make me feel something else.

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.

No one has ever made me feel the way he does, in every possible way. It’s like he lights a fire inside me. He winds me up until I’m so full of energy, I could burst. And yet...I’ve never felt contentment with anyone else. I’ve never felt safe with anyone but him, and that’s what is so confusing. Because no one has ever broken me quite like he has.

He’s the star in some of my best memories, but he’s also caused some of my worst.

I’ve always loved a rainstorm.

“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.”

You don’t want to erase your mistakes. You want to transform them into something beautiful.

“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.”

“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.”

He’s the only person who can set me on fire and coax me to dance while I burn.

“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.”

“Good girl,”

“Be a good girl for me, Lennon Capri,”

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.

“You’re my home, Astraea.”

“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.”

We had to be apart before we could be stronger together.