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"

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

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

- Tu veux connaître un autre secret, Stella ? (Ma voix est méconnaissable dans sa crudité.) Je suis incapable de te dire « non » (Pas quand il s’agit des choses qui comptent.) Mais je serai toujours là si tu as besoin de moi, n’importe où, n’importe quand. Je me fiche qu’on soit sur différents continents, si c’est dans cinq ou cinquante ans. Je refuse que tu te réveilles et que tu aies l’impression d’être seule, parce que ce n’est pas le cas. Tu m’auras toujours.

Les yeux me brûlent alors que ma dernière et plus grande vérité sort en m’irritant la gorge.

- Je t’aime. Tellement, putain.

"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"

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—

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

They always went back to her. »

Même si tu ne me parles plus jamais.

Même si tu passes à autre chose.

Moi, je t'aimerai toujours.

Tu seras toujours mon premier, mon dernier et mon unique amour.

– Je pourrais te regarder compter le sable de la plage grain par grain que ce serait passionnant.