Parker

“I figured it out when you moaned my brother’s name while coming around my cock.” His eyes dipped down as if to remind me I was still on him.

“If he can make you come harder than you did around my cock, he deserves a medal.”

“Fuck.” He pushed me down harder on him, grinding his cock between my thighs. “I can’t figure out what’s worse—that you’re twenty-fucking-two, that you’re my brother’s best friend, or that my mouth has never touched your pussy.”

I realized, with depressing clarity, that she wasn’t the venom at all. She was the antidote. But the quantities were all off.

Suicide is a war of two fears—fear of death and fear of the thing that pushes you toward it. The stronger side always wins. And if you lose, the penalty is death.

Once a year, for a stolen hour, I let myself be the venom. The toxin. The thing that poisoned her. But with one momentary lapse in selfishness, I pushed her away. I’ve regretted it every day since.

No one asked you to touch me. No one asked you to stay. Don’t feel guilty because you want to leave me. Feel guilty because you’re shallow enough to be turned off by scar tissue. Now get out!”

I hope the last thing you think about when you close your eyes is the fact that your brother hated you enough that he chose death over living under your roof.

“I don’t date. I fuck. If you’re happy with that arrangement, you know where to find me. I’m fond of you, Charlie, which is why I’m going to advise you, as a friend, not to take me up on that offer. I’m too old, too jaded, and too fucked-up to give you what you want outside the bedroom.”

“You don’t know what it feels like to be beautiful one day and wake up the next with it stripped away. Try scarring your face, Charlotte. Then, get back to me. Until then, anything you say will just be seen as a selfish attempt to make yourself feel better.”