Page 141 of Possess Me! (I Want You To)

She was wrong.

Prudence had made his choice.

And I…I would just have to live with it.

Even if it felt like I was dying with him.

Since the moment I’d found out I was a ghost, all I’d ever wanted was to actually die. To let the nothingness free me from the monotony of existence. To finally escape the tedium of everyday struggles. To break away from the people, the emotions, that had always felt like a cage. There was nothing to live for when the future felt like a trap. There were countless experiences I didn’t want to have, people I didn’t want to meet, things I didn’t want to feel.

But for the first time in my life I had something to look forward to. Something to leave behind. Regret. Heartbreak. Possibility. There were paint-smeared kisses, I hadn’t tasted. Masterpieces that we hadn’t created. Smiles I hadn’t collected. Giggles I hadn’t heard. Bruises I hadn’t left. Memories I hadn’t made. A future that was both promising and terrifying all at once.

Luca had said that the world was big enough.

Whether or not that was true, I no longer cared. I would make space for myself inside it if I had to. I was tired of feeling like I was not enough. I deserved life, and I would take my happiness, whether or not I’d earned it.

Something had changed inside me.

Something fundamental and frightening.

That change had never been more apparent than it was as Vanity sat down across from Lydia, and everything I’d been experiencing—everything I’d endured, survived, and struggled through came rushing back full force.

I thought of green eyes. I thought of sobbing. A tiny boy who resembled the person I had used to care most about in the entire world, held down and beaten in front of me. I thought of darkness, of the Nothing. Of choices I never would have made.

I thought of the freedom I’d felt the moment the chain around Lydia’s neck had snapped, and her hold over me had shattered.

I thought of months under my sister’s watchful care. Of the bodies I’d plowed. The life I’d chased through fleeting pleasure. The boredom. The gnawing desire for the monotony to end, devouring me from the inside out.

I thought of gray eyes.

Kind, gray eyes.

A smile brighter than the sun.

Freckles, all 998 of them.

Freckles I’d counted as Luca lay sleeping, sprawled naked, and gorgeous—always trusting, even when attached to a monster like me.

I thought of the words I hadn’t spoken, not just to him, but to anyone. Words that had never meant anything to me until he’d shown me what they looked like.

You don’t have to go, you know? You could stay with me. Here. Or home—wherever you wanted to go. This doesn’t have to be the end of this.

And suddenly…suddenly…none of it mattered anymore.

Not the green eyes.

Not the loss.

Not Amanda, and everything that had happened. Her tragedy—I realized now—hadn’t been my fault.

Maybe it would matter, today, or tomorrow—the next day after that. But that meant there had to be a tomorrow, didn’t it?

“I’ll bring him to visit you,” Vanity bargained, putting on the charm like she so rarely did back home. She was just as manipulative as Luca was, should she need to be. Growing up with our mother had taught her that. Hiding inside her consciousness like this I could feel her fear, the way it trembled.

I had no sympathy.

She’d been the one to insist on taking me.

To right her wrongs, despite her own very real fear.

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