“What? I think they should know we don’t mean any harm.” I roll my eyes and stand on my tiptoes as I lean into him, planting a kiss on the side of his face. I can feel his cheekbones lift with his smile. “Disgusting,” Luna says again, but there’s amusement laced in her words too.

I want to break his ribs, just to curl against his heart.

Eric explodes, and Eli kisses the tip of my ear, still holding me close, forcing me still. My heart is frantic, despite my medication. “Eli, what—” “I love you too,” he says, fingers coming to the back of my neck. “Don’t ever fucking forget it.”

“Spinning around, Eden turns to face us both again, grinning in the dark as she twirls the knife between her fingers.” eden rain by paulinaklime on ig 💚

“There’s no world where I live without you, and you die without me.”

eli pov bonus scene mega.nz/file/UnFjBLAR#…

I’m drowning in a girl who would gladly drown me and walk away from it all. She did exactly that, didn’t she?

“If you didn’t know, I think you’re attractive too.” He stares at me a moment longer. Then his smile pulls wider, becomes more genuine, and he drops his hand, stepping back, shaking his head with the smallest laugh.

“What?” I blurt out, knowing now he’s, for some reason, manipulating his way into my good graces with his compliment. “I suck at reading out loud.” “No,” he tells me, dropping his gaze, those lashes fluttering. “You don’t.”

“If you could do anything in the world and get away with it, what would it be?” “I would keep you.”

Her eyes flash open, and for a second, the weak rays of sunlight reflecting off the expansive sea, her irises appear wholly blue, like the ocean, and I don’t know why, but I stop breathing, just staring at her.

“You’re the beautiful half of me.”

It’s like she didn’t pay attention to the story about the rabbit at all. But I know she did, because later, as I’m walking her to my car, my arm around her shoulders, she looks at me in the darkness of the parking lot and asks, “So, no pets, then?”

I roll my eyes and stand on my tiptoes as I lean into him, planting a kiss on the side of his face. I can feel his cheekbones lift with his smile.

A small laugh escapes my lips, and he tilts his chin up, his smile even wider.

She presses her wet palm flat to my cheek, where she hit me. Leaning close to me, so we’re heart-to-heart, she says, “I love you, you little brat.”

He’s like looking into a mirror, except I don’t hate my reflection in him. I love him. I love myself. I love us. And he’d never hurt me. Not in a way I wouldn’t want. I think, maybe, I’m the only person in the world who could say something like that about Eli Addison.

I pull her into my lap, and she’s laughing. It’s so loud, so rare from a girl like her, I feel as if I’m the only person on earth who will ever hear it.

“Ready?” I ask him, echoing Luna’s question. He smiles, staring at me from the corner of his eye. “Yes.” “You two are honestly disgusting,” Luna says, but there’s nothing harmful in her words. Eli’s smile widens.