Extraits

“Hey, Zade?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Thank you for bringing me the happy vapors.”

I bite my lip, feeling my chest crack from how fucking addicted I am to this girl.

I was wrong.

Heaven isn’t a place you go to when you die, it’s inside the person that’s worth dying for. “Addie?”

“Yeah?”

I bring my mouth close to her ear, delighting in the way she shivers. I’m already hard for her again, my obsession limitless.

“Run, little mouse.”

“You will never be able to live without me, Zade,” I breathe. “If you’re my death, then I’m your fucking lifeline.”

She holds on to me like she’s falling, but I have no interest in catching her. I will always fall with her, chasing after her even in death.

“Tell me about her,” I say. “Tell me everything about you.”

She raises an eyebrow, and I smile because it’s cute. “You mean you don’t know everything about me already?”

“Of course, I don’t, baby. Not the things that matter. I may know what high school you graduated from or where you went to college before you dropped out, but that doesn’t mean I know how happy you were. If you were lonely or sad. Or if a boy cornered you in a library and made you scared.” I pause, that particular scenario angering me. “If that happened, I just need a name, that’s all.”

“I dare you, Adeline. Deny that my name isn’t carved into every star you see when I make you come, and I will show you that a God can create them just as easily as he can destroy them.”

“Don’t forget your knives and guns, mouse,” I call after her. “And, Sibby… limit your knives and guns.”

Seeing him now, kneeling before me, I understand why. The day I handed over my love to him was the first time a God fell to his knees, bowed his head, and prayed. He prayed because I gave him the one thing he could never control, and he never wanted to lose it.

“Punish me then. I deserve it,” I hiss.

I want him to.

As long as he’s here, touching me, hurting me—it’s better than him being another ghost haunting Parsons Manor.

“Or is the kitty cat too scared of the mouse?”

He cries out, dropping the knife. Before I can land another punch, this one to his throat, his head kicks back, a hole now in the center of his forehead.

I turn with wide eyes, finding Zade tucking away his weapon.

“Sorry, baby. He touched your ass, therefore, I needed to kill him.”

I forge on, heart pounding as he grinds against me, enjoying watching me struggle to get the words out. “Sometimes, I wish I’d never met you. Because now that I have, now that I’m in love with you, I’ll never be able to carve you out. You said I’d bleed out before that’d ever happen, and you were right. And I hate you for that.”