Things We Hide from the Light (Knockemout, #2)

by Lucy Score

It was a depraved kind of longing. One I almost relished because feeling something, anything was better than nothing.

“You know what no one tells you about standing in the middle of a pissing contest?” Cherry said to me with a toss of her blond curls.

“What’s that?” I asked. “You’re the one who ends up smelling like pee.”

“You make me feel things. And after going long enough without feeling anything, feeling something—even if it’s anger or adrenaline—is better than the nothing.”

Whenever you’re close, everything is better. The closer you are, the easier I breathe, the less I feel like life is just a never-ending pour of lemon juice into an open wound that won’t heal. You take away the dark, the cold. And you remind me what it’s like to want to be here.”

“I just wish I woulda kept trying to look to the light instead of sinking into the dark,” he said. “A man can learn to live in that dark, but it’s no life.”

“Being vulnerable doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you trust yourself to be strong enough to handle the hurt. It’s actually the purest form of strength.”