Revive Me, Part One: The Act (New Haven, #2)

by J.L. Seegars

To the survivors who hid their wounds and built something beautiful out of the destruction

“In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.” MAYA ANGELOU

She doesn’t just make you feel bad for a moment, something quick you can shake off the second you’re out of her presence and the disapproving tisk she makes after every word fades from your mind.

Our family members are perpetually late, always showing up on their own time with nothing but their hands out and mouths open.

It all sounds so clinical. A business deal masquerading as a marriage.

every dog has to learn how to come home when called.”

“Blessings don’t usually come with strings attached.”

“I think desires can be born out of any circumstance, good, bad, or ugly, and still be valid representations of the things we want for ourselves. The source of the desire doesn’t matter so much as what we do with the dream it sparks in us.”

She’s an exquisite, perfect thing. With all her secrets and half-truths and anxious habits that make me want to make all her problems go away.

That’s why no one here knows about your mom. That’s why you hide the demons that keep you up at night behind a big smile and bury the rest of it inside whatever girl finds her way into your bed.”

Tears burn at the back of my eyes, but they don’t fall. They never do.

“Mallory, as long as we’re doing this,” he gestures between the two of us, “I can promise you that you won’t see or hear about me being with anyone else. All of my time, attention, and affection is yours.”

edicts

“No.” He frowns. “You, princess. Your happiness. Your safety. Your well-being. I take it all very seriously.”

“You were in shock. Someone you thought loved and respected you was violating you in the most horrific way.

“Trauma induced shock doesn’t stop once the trauma stops. Your brain needed time to recover, to get to a point where it was functioning and able to get you to safety.”

“It’s more than nice, Mallory. Your smile is the thing I want most in the world. I spend every waking moment trying to find new ways to get you to give it to me. I wish for it on every shooting star and repeating number on a clock.”

“I’ll probably spend the rest of my life wishing for it to always be mine.”

“Not fake, princess. Real. Everything I feel for you, everything I want with you is real.”

Mallory Kent could ask me for the moon, and I’d find a way to get it for her. She could ask me for the stars, and I’d steal them from the sky. She could ask for my heart, and, well….she already has that. She just doesn’t know it yet.

“You’re not just my girlfriend, Mallory. You’re my mission. My purpose. The only thing in my life I can’t afford to fail at, so forgive me if I don’t give a fuck about what another man in my position would do because I can guarantee you there isn’t a man in this world who….”

Time to write in journals she hid from her husband because she didn’t feel comfortable saying the things she wrote in them to his face. That must have been awful for her. Being married to someone who didn’t see you, who didn’t listen to you, who couldn’t truly love you because they refused to hold space for you. And to have kids with them, to be tied to them by name and blood and soul. I can only imagine that it was unbearable at times, that she dealt with things she could have walked away from if it was just her.

“I want you to fuck me like you know I won’t break. I want it hard and rough and perfect. I want to be sore when I wake up in the morning, and then I want you to spread my legs and fuck me again. I want your teeth in my skin and your hands in my hair. I want us—our desires, our moods, our needs—to be the only thing determining how we do this. Not my past. Not your fears about hurting me or your thoughts about what I deserve. Because what I deserve is a partner who trusts me to decide what I want and how I want it.”

I guess the human heart can only stop so many times, can only take so much damage before it questions whether it’s worth it to be revived.

Sometimes the people you’re checking on would prefer to be spared the agony of having to rehash the emotions of losing someone they loved with someone they used to know.

the power of our lies and the potential of our promises.