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

Breathe,” he whispered, the quiet command pulling the trapped air from my lungs and giving me a glimpse of a side of him I’d never seen before. Dark. Dangerous. Lethal.

Eric and Nic pick on me for how anal I am about note-taking when I read, but it helps me keep my mind on the text

My name on her lips.

Not many people can pull off the kind of dry humor Mallory specializes in. She’s witty, clever, with sharp barbs that strike you before you even know that you’ve been hit.

His demons are his business.

It winds its way through me, slipping under my skin and weaving through my bloodstream, curling up along every nerve ending that’s linked to my system, and I freeze.

It’s actually the exact opposite because you’re not choosing anything, you’re sampling everything.”

Whew!

spin on my heels and hold the hand without the knife up. He doesn’t stop walking in time though, and in a matter of seconds, my palm is resting flat on the rigid muscles of his pectorals. The heat radiating through the fabric of his shirt melts all of my nerve endings and for a second I forget what I was about to say.

The girl who always has such a tight grip on her life that no one bothers to look to see if she’s falling apart on the inside.

“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.

and all I want to do in this moment is kiss her. Even as she lays into me, lashing out with her words and striking all of my vulnerabilities with frightening precision, all I want is to feel those lips, the same ones spitting venom at me, against mine. It’s madness.

A wish for his kiss, for his hands on my skin, for his eyes, soft and serious and all mine.

We’re quite a pair, Mallory and I, both unavailable and seeking asylum from former connections in the safety of each other.

“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.”

“I’ll always be in the mood to hold your hand.”

“You’re not just anyone, though.”

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

“I know, baby,” I whisper, the words leaving my lips on a rough exhale. “What can I do? Tell me what you need.” “Hold me.”

“That’s good. You deserve someone who’s willing to wait for you.”

I want to dip my tongue into that hollow place, to drink her sweat from it, and sink my teeth into her collar bone while pleasure pours from her lips.

“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.”

“I’m still afraid of having good things taken away from me, yeah, but I’ll do any and everything in my power to keep them. To keep you.”

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.

She’s greedy and demanding. Beautiful and dangerous. And mine. All fucking mine,

“You’re very bossy, you know that, princess?”

“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….”

“You can say anything to me right now. You can give me any reason why you don’t want to go further tonight, and I promise I’ll accept it. I can understand if you’re not in the right head space. If you’re not in the mood. But don’t you dare make this about fear because I’m not afraid of you, Chris.”

Literally do not take this moment away from 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.

Oh period!

“Next time I’m going to make you do that in a cup, so I can make sure I drink every drop.”

Omg lmaooo

He asked me to come to dinner, so we could talk through things and come to a solution that would work for both of us. Never once did he mention that Giselle and her parents would be joining us.

Punk ass!!!!

“When they see the video, I mean. Do you think Eric, Annette, Dominic, and Sloane will ever look at her the same?

??????????????????? Are you okay?! WTF

It’s not until two hours later, when I’m laying on my bed staring at the ceiling, that I realize neither of us said ‘I love you.’

Because they’re all staring at Chris. Watching his slow transition from standing to kneeling. Kneeling. On one knee with an open ring box in his hands and his eyes on Giselle.

WTFFFFFFFFFFFFF?

“You wouldn’t understand. You don’t have any idea what it’s like to have the future of an entire family dependent on you.”

And he’s left me to pick up the pieces, to scoop the roses off the stage and snuff out the hope stored in their velvet petals with the heavy pages of the book that contains the story of us. A tragedy. Masquerading as a romance.

Im sobbing…