Or three. Or four,” I added.

‘I don’t love anything. —Parker ‘I know.’ —Everett

I was naked under his gaze. Skin was just that: skin. But to see your soul stripped, laid bare for the eyes of someone you barely knew-that was terrifying.

Words could bite. When I spoke to strangers, I wanted my words to have fangs.

I don’t want to merely exist, Parker. I want to live. I want to leave the world with that one sweet moment.

I so desperately wanted to be his gravity, to hold him on this earth and keep him from leaving me.

I’m not talking about the scars that separate your skin, Parker. I’m not blind, I can see those. I’m talking about the scars much deeper than that. The scars that exist within you. The ones...

But I want more, more than just a night, more than just a few touches. And I have a feeling that once we cross that line, you will run away.

He held me as if my bones were made of glass, as if my skin would tear beneath his lips if he applied too much pressure. When his lips pressed against the pulse at the...

Funny, that’s what I was thinking, too,” he said, looking directly at me.

That night I dreamt of the moment I found my mother’s body. My life was a series of befores and afters: before my mother’s death and after my mother’s death. Before I left the Monster...