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408 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 4, 2014
“i want you to make a list of all of your favorite things, and i want to be on it.”
”you can have anything of mine you want. you can have all of it.”
”lift your hips for me, love”
Juliette now knows she may be the only one who can stop the Reestablishment. But to take them down, she’ll need the help of the one person she never thought she could trust: Warner. And as they work together, Juliette will discover that everything she thought she knew—about Warner, her abilities, and even Adam—was wrong.
"Lift your hips for me, love."Iconic 🛐
"In a world where there is so much to grieve and so little good to take? I grieve nothing. I take everything."
"I am no longer afraid of fear, and I will not let it rule me. Fear will learn to fear me."
"You'll fight with me?" I ask him, hardly breathing. "Fight back with me? Even if it's with Warner?"
Kenji smiles. Looks up at the sky. "Hell yeah," he says. "Really?"
"I'm here for you, kid. That's what friends are for."
"It's like a soap opera." Ian nods. "But with worse acting."
"I notice he’s wearing a white button-down, half untucked into his curiously unrumpled black slacks. His shirtsleeves are folded, pushed up past his elbows."FOLDED SHIRTSLEEVES I REPEAT FOLDED SHIRTSLEEVES. I'm folded dude.
“I won’t let go until you’re ready,” he tells me. “Don’t worry. Take your time.”STOP PLEASE STOP THIS IS TOO MUCH.
“Don’t torture me,” he says, meeting my eyes again. “It’s a cruel thing to do, even to someone like me.”
“You should get a dog, love. I hear they share much the same qualities.”BAHAAAHA ADAM IS A DOG, I LOVE AARON. purr, slay, yass.
“You want me and it’s killing you. You deserve so much more than charity. You deserve to live. You deserve to be alive. Come back to life, love. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Adam’s fist is frozen only inches from Warner’s face. It’s caught in Warner’s hand.
Adam is shocked into silence, his whole body shaking from the unspent energy. Warner leans into his brother’s face, whispers, “You really don’t want to fight me, you idiot,” and hurls Adam’s fist back with so much force that Adam flies backward, catching himself just before hitting the floor.
“I’m here for you, kid. That’s what friends are for.”
“I was happier,” Adam says, “when I thought she was dead.”
“Are you okay?” he’s saying. “God—are you okay? What happened? Are you all right?”
He’s here.
He’s here and all I want to do is fall apart but I don’t.
“Do you want me to leave?” Warner asks.
“No,” I say too quickly. “No.”
Warner leans back, just a little. “Tell me what you want,” he says desperately. “Tell me what to do,” he says, “and I’ll do it.”
I turn on Warner, chest heaving, fists clenched. “Give them what they want. I don’t care what it is,” I say to him. “Please, you have to negotiate. You have to make this work. I need him. I need my friends.”
Warner looks at me for a long time.
“Please,” I whisper.
“I don’t want you to be repulsed by me”
“You’re perfect,” I tell him, so overcome I forget myself. “All of you. Your entire body. Proportionally. Symmetrically. You’re absurdly, mathematically perfect. It doesn’t even make sense that a person could look like you,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t believe you would ever say something like that—”
“I thought you could sense feelings,” I say to him. “I thought mine would be so obvious to you.”
“I can’t always think clearly,” he says, frustrated, rubbing his face, his forehead. “Especially when my emotions are involved. I can’t always be objective—and sometimes I make assumptions,” he says, “that aren’t true—and I don’t—I just don’t trust my own judgment anymore. Because I’ve done that,” he says, “and it’s backfired. So terribly.”
“Why don’t you understand?” He looks up at me and his eyes are so full of pain and devastation it actually takes my breath away.
My hands are shaking. “Understand what—?”
“I love you.”
He breaks.
His voice. His back. His knees. His face.
He breaks.
He has to hold on to the side of his desk. He can’t meet my eyes. “I love you,” he says, his words harsh and soft all at once. “I love you and it isn’t enough”
Which means right now, I’m watching him bench-press three hundred and fifteen pounds. Three forty-five-pound plates on each side of what Kenji told me is called an Olympic bar, which weighs an additional forty-five pounds. I can’t stop staring. I don’t think I’ve ever been more attracted to him in all the time I’ve known him.
“You’re not attracted to him?”
“I’m attracted to you.”
“I’m serious,” he says.
“So am I.”
“How easy is it to take this thing off?”
“You know,” he whispers, his lips at my ear, “the whole world will be coming for us now.”
I lean back. Look into his eyes.
“I can’t wait to watch them try.”