Revive Me, Part Two: The Affair (New Haven, #3)

by J.L. Seegars

To the daughters who were taught how to sacrifice but not how to live. May you find peace in this era of selfishness, power in the making of decisions that only serve you, and joy in everything in between.

The second she heard that Eric was gone she turned herself inside out, dumping out the contents of her heart and mind to make room for the pain. Maybe she has some of ours in there too, wrapped up in the aching fibers of her being.

Everyone processes loss differently, and the amount of tears you shed don’t say nothing about how much you loved the person you lost or how much you miss them.”

“Maybe they were cool with rushing because they didn’t have anything in front of them that was worth slowing down for, but I’d stop the world for you. I’d freeze time if it meant I would never run out of opportunities to look at you.”

Then she encouraged me to stop trying to make myself feel, and to instead, wait for the feelings to find me.

“Do you know how desperate you have to be to wish for someone who destroyed you, to crave their presence even when you know it’s only going to cause you pain?”

safe place to fall apart. In every other relationship in her life, Mallory has cast herself as the caretaker. The rock on which everyone else can lean, but when it’s me and her, she can be this. Vulnerable, trusting me to be her shield.

It’s the magnetism that exists between two people even when there are a million other people in the room. It’s knowing exactly how many steps it will take you to get to them no matter where they are in relation to you. The frantic thrum of colliding hearts when you finally reach them, when you finally touch them. When the curve of their neck suddenly becomes the only path you want to take. When their lips are your longitude and the unique swirl of color in the center of their irises is your latitude.

Shame tries to wash over me, but I push the feeling down because there’s nothing shameful about grieving, about feeling deeply. There’s power in owning these feelings, peace in acknowledging that they exist.

She thinks we’re repeating history, but I won’t allow it. I’ll turn back the sky for her. Rewrite scripture, myth, and fiction. Undo the bindings of history books, tear out their pages and fill them with the story of us.