When She Falls (The Fallen, #3)

by Gabrielle Sands

I fucking love bread. It’s one of life’s greatest pleasures.

“You should thank God that your loyalty will never require you to sell your body to another. That Damiano will never ask you to let a stranger take you home and spend years pumping you full of his children.”

“That’s what we’re ultimately here for, you know? To breed. In our world, my crowning achievement will be birthing the next generation of made men. That’s what I have waiting for me. So in my last few weeks of freedom, the last thing I need is you rubbing in my face just how pathetic you think I am.”

I hate being alone. It terrifies me.

I don’t have a lot of clear memories from when I was a kid.

Why not listen to it? Why not listen to myself for once? Can I even make out what that little voice inside my head is saying? It’s all the way at the back, in the corner, silenced and pushed aside.

“I don’t want to be your first, Peaches. I want to be your last. And I don’t want your fucking virginity. I just want you.”

I’ve always been lacking in one way or another. Always. But for the first time, I wonder if maybe I could be just enough for him.

Guilt is physical. It’s a parasite that grows inside your gut, getting bigger and bigger with each passing day, feeding on you.

One day, he’ll wake up and realize that I wasn’t worth throwing his life away. He says he loves me, but it’s because he doesn’t really know me. He doesn’t know how pathetic I am.

“And you still don’t know shit,” he snarls. “But I do. I know that I chose you. Despite everything stacked against us, I chose you. I love you. I spent a decade forgetting how to love someone, and yet a few weeks with you is all it took for me to learn it all again.” His laugh is humorless. “You are the air I breathe. You are the ground that keeps me standing. Without you, I’m nothing, Gemma.”