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

by Brit Benson

This is my Lennon. I knew she was still in there.

“You want to make me the villain in your story, so you feel better? To justify running off to Paris and saying fuck you to your family? Okay. But don’t ever say I didn’t care about you. You’re the only thing I have ever cared about.”

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

“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’m in love with your daughter, Trent.”

“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.”

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.”

“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. I love you.”