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291 pages, Paperback
First published June 25, 2020
“This is me saying that I would set myself on fire to bring light to all of the dark places within you.”
“Please, just make me hate you.” ... “Only if you make me hate you first.”
“This isn’t effortless love, but it is real love."
“What are you saying, Tyler?”
“I’m saying that you are spectacular, Jasmine Olsen, and that I love you with everything that I am.”
He was something between the boy I used to love and the man I’d never know, familiar and unreachable all at once.
We crossed every line that night — and I went from loving my best friend’s brother in secret to wanting nothing more than to love him out loud.
“You’re hurting, and it’s killing me, and I don’t know how to fix it other than to pull you into me and try to shield you from whatever it is that’s bringing you pain.”
“It’s you who brings me pain. It’s you who is killing me. It’s you, and us,” I said, motioning between us. “It’s this thing that never was, but always is, that never will be and will never not be.”
It felt like years of regret, like decades of longing, like centuries of wrong decisions and missed opportunities and fucked-up timing.
How could we ever be together?
How could we ever be apart?
His arms trembled as I wrapped my hands around them, holding onto him, begging him not to pull away as much as I begged him to put distance between us because I knew we should — and I knew I couldn’t be the one to do it.
He and I, we weren’t just here and now. We were the past, the present, the future. We were other worlds and other universes, too.
“I just want to hate you. Please,” I begged, fisting my hands in his shirt to hold him closer but still trying to shove him away. “Please, just make me hate you.”
“Only if you make me hate you first.”
I saw what once was, what maybe could have been, and more than anything, what never was.
I fell to my knees, letting out a guttural cry at the devastating pain of losing him again.
As if I’d ever really had him, at all.
I love you.
I need you.
Please, be with me. Choose me. Fuck everyone else.
I don’t care who we hurt.
I don’t care as long as it’s us in the end.
“And I want you to be happy.”
Jacob nodded, his eyes cast downward. “Just not with you, right?”
We were shackled to each other like prisoners, but if someone handed one of us the key, we’d hide it and pretend we never had any other option.
Perhaps it was a lifetime, and we would always be destined to watch each other from that distance — close enough to feel, yet never close enough to touch.
“Because I miss you. Because I have missed you, ever since the day you left. Because it kills me to be around you and not touch you, laugh with you, to not be engulfed with everything that you are.”
“You are my weakness, Jaz,” he husked. “You always have been.”
“So, what now?”
Tyler grinned, pulling back to look me in the eyes. “I was thinking we could spend the rest of our lives making up for lost time.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. What do you think about that?”
“I think the rest of our lives won’t even be enough.”
At that, Tyler kissed me, slow and soft and sure, and then he whispered, “Then let’s stay together forever after that, too.”
I knew I needed to let you go.” He shook his head. “But fuck, I never learned how to. You’re impossible to forget, Jasmine. Impossible to get over.”
“Me?” I pointed a finger into my chest. “Try getting over you.”
Healthy relationships were weird.
I said yes with every single piece of me.
I said yes with my hands in his hair, with my lips warm against his, with my heart and soul that had been plucked out of me years ago and given to him, wrapped in a little gold bow. I said yes with a promise to never let anything stand between us again. I said yes with fear behind me, beneath me, unable to touch me again. I said yes with an ache that seared as much as it filled, that broke as much as it mended, that told me more than anything that there was no other option but this one.
I was his.
And he was mine.
“I also discovered today that I am a terrible person,” I whispered into the microphone. “I guess we all are, aren’t we? At least, when we really break ourselves down to the molecular level. When we push aside all the sunshine and bullshit, and look good and hard at who we are, at the decisions we make, at the things we feel — things we would never say out loud or confess to anyone else. Maybe, at the core of every human being, there’s a dark, hidden world. Maybe it’s not what we do for a living or our hobbies or our background or our family that makes us who we are, but rather what exists in that dark little world that no one sees. And we can’t ever show it to anyone — not to our best friend or our family or our significant other — because we know in our gut that if anyone ever saw what truly existed there, they’d run. They’d run and curse us and scream at us to stay far, far away.”
I held onto him like he was all I needed, all that mattered, and we spiraled together into the darkness we’d created.
Our own little personal hell.
“No,” he commanded. “Don’t get shy on me now, Jazzy. I want to see you. Open those legs for me.”
Any time we were together, it was trouble. He was doing the right thing. And yet all I yearned to do was the wrong one.
↳ best friend's brother, forbidden (cuz duh they're with other people), second chance (they were separated for 7 years??), friends to lovers with a dash of hate to love, childhood bffs, found family trope, the whole setting being at a wedding, and uhhh... cheating.
↳ Jasmine (h) and Tyler (H) have been best friends since they were in highschool. one night before Jasmine's high school graduation, her mother left her and she sought solace to her best friend aka Tyler's sister, Morgan but found Tyler instead and they slept together. next day, Tyler ignores and tells her it was mistake.
heartbroken, Jasmine leaves and doesn't come back till years later as she was invited to Morgan's and thus ensues the drama between the two.
↳ spoiler: the MCs are in a relationship with other people so obviously they cheated on their significant others with each other.
It’s you who brings me pain. It’s you who is killing me. It’s you, and us,” I added, motioning between us. “It’s this thing that never was, but always is, that never will be and will never not be.”