Extraits

To everyone whose favorite color is morally grey.

"Touch another man, he dies. Let another man touch you, he dies. Tell me I can't touch you..." ... "And I will fucking die"

She’d sent a screenshot of a Stories poll. A picture of me, back turned and phone to my ear, took up the left side of the screen; a familiar purple unicorn dominated the right side.

The question was simple: Who would you rather cuddle with? Mr. Harper or Mr. Unicorn?

“You’re losing, by the way,” Stella said. “Mr. Unicorn is beating you fifty-three to forty-seven percent.”

I stared at her, sure I was hearing wrong and that she didn’t have the fucking audacity to pit me against a raggedy stuffed animal with a crooked eye in some absurd social media poll. I was also sure I couldn’t be losing to said stuffed animal.

“The poll must be broken because that’s ridiculous.” I tried not to sound as insulted as I felt.

(...)

"And for the record…” I tapped my phone screen. “You need followers with better taste if they’re choosing a unicorn over me. I’m wearing Brioni, for fuck’s sake.”

(...)

Sometimes, I truly despised people.

And objects.

I glared at the raggedy stuffed animal polluting my living room. I didn’t understand why Stella loved it so much, or why her followers would rather cuddle with it than me —I hated cuddling, but it was the principle of the matter—

He was always tuned to Ava, but in that moment, he looked at her like the world was the night sky and she was the only star in existence.

"Step aside, Ava, or I'll..."

"Careful how you finish that sentence, Harper." Alex appeared beside his fiancée...

"I'm not a jealous man, Stella. I have never envied someone for what they have or who they're with, and yet..." My fingers glided down to her wrist. "I'm jealous of every person you smile at..." A brush over her fingers. "Every laugh I don't hear..

My touch dipped to her knee and made a slow, languorous journey up her thigh. "Every breeze that touches your skin and every sound that pours through your lips. It. Is. Maddening"

And where is your date tonight?” It was an innocent question, but intuition told me to keep the exact location to myself.

“A bar.”

“How specific.”

“How none of your business"

« If my thoughts were chaos, she was my anchor.

They always went back to her. »

I would give Stella anything she wanted, even if it killed me in the process.

The calm to my chaos, the silence to my storm.