Tess Sharpe

Mina likes to play with fire.
But I’m the one who gets burned.

I want to remember everything because it’s the first time.
Later, I’ll remember everything because it’s the only time.

“She was in love with you,” he says. “And I don’t think she got to tell you, did she?”
My heart lurches, seizes inside my chest, fluttering to life at the words I’ve always wanted to hear. I shake my head. Tears spill down my cheeks.
“She loved you. She wanted to be with you. That’s why she told me about herself. She said she’d made her choice. It was you. I think it was always you.”
I look away from him, out through the blinds at the lights of town, and he stays quiet, a comforting witness, letting me cry.
Letting me finally let her go.

At first, I think Joseph’s smiley in the way Elijah was—that kind of fake cheeriness that’s all performance and pomp. After all, he owns a slew of car dealerships. He’s a salesman, and a slick one at that. It would make sense.

this giant lump of fear in my stomach, chest, and throat.

sawed-off shotgun

His voice is gruff

Give a person what they want, you’ll have them in the palm of your hand.

Useful is what it is. To see into the heart of someone and adjust accordingly, instantaneously, to mirror that heart? It’s not a gift or a curse. It’s just a tool.

What didn’t kill me didn’t make me stronger; what didn’t kill me made me a victim.

But I made me stronger. I made me a survivor.