If you’re supposed to work with someone, I’d recommend not getting all hot and bothered with them the night before. The word of the day was “tense.
Despite the way she rallied, the haunted look in her eyes was enough to break him, as lost and lonely as an abandoned child’s.
Truth be told, loneliness had seeped into her bones with the passing of time until it had become her normal way of life.
She would never forget how his soul was lonely as the moon they’d met under, and how, for several brief moments, she’d been able to chase the loneliness away.
She’d sworn she wouldn’t end up like her little brother, but loneliness didn’t arrive with flashing bulbs and a warning label. The descent was as simple and complex as a faked smile, white lies about...
They dabbled in dark magic like finger painters in first grade art class, and then most of them were either killed by their creations or ran the other way from the nightmares they unleashed.
What bothered me the most was the hesitation in his voice when he said that— like he was running out of time.
He knew too well the sting of loneliness and how over time it stole you away, piece by piece, until a mere shell remained.
Harsh, bitter laughs exploded from her like shrapnel, and she didn’t care who was cut in the process.
Ice upon ice, and yet, inside, she melted and mourned all the same.
He stroked her back and kept a fierce grip on her like she’d fade away into one of the thousands of ghosts in this cemetery.
As the sky faded to night, her anger dissipated—but not in a healing way, just dulled, like forged iron sizzling in a cold pail of water.
Geoff’s arm emanated with a solid warmth I longed for after our days aboard S.S. British-Craphole.
Too late; my awkwardness had already made an unforgettable appearance, so, of course, I couldn’t be let off the hook.
Because if I fell any deeper for the way his eyes crinkled with his smile or his habit of tapping on his nose to emphasize a point, my ship would be sunk.
Despite the cold chill, she burned inside with a hunger she didn’t want to dismiss. Not tonight.
Because one look into his eyes, and she was drowning in what existed there and didn’t want to surface.
Her lips against his, the sun soaking into their skin, and the sweet, fragrant breezes that wafted through this isolated picnic area was nothing short of perfection.
My dad had always said to not trust something unless it’s taken a tumble in the dirt. He’d meant it for people, and for things. Shiny and new didn’t exist for humankind any more.
A thousand words blossomed to her lips and died there, because no amount of speaking could communicate the depths of how he’d affected her. Of how he’d changed her.
