You want to know my sweet?" I ask her.

She nods.

I kiss her on the forehead. "You. Always you.

COMPLETELY.
Utterly.
Frozen.
My eyes drop to the table in front of me when she finishes. Her words are sinking in.
A boy that I'm seriously, deeply, madly, incredibly, and undeniably in love with.
In love with?
That's what she said.
In love with. As in present tense.
She loves me. Layken Cohen loves me.

We all have a limit. What we’re willing to put up with before we break. When I married your father, I knew exactly what my limit was. But slowly . . . with every incident . . . my limit was pushed a little more. And a little more. The first time your father hit me, he was immediately sorry. He swore it would never happen again. The second time he hit me, he was even more sorry. The third time it happened, it was more than a hit. It was a beating. And every single time, I took him back. But the fourth time, it was only a slap. And when that happened, I felt relieved. I remember thinking, ‘At least he didn’t beat me this time. This wasn’t so bad.’ 

There are people you meet that you get to know, and then there are people you meet that you already know.

You drink to escape the emotional pain you’re in, and then the next day you do it all over again to get rid of the physical pain. So you drink more and your drink more often and pretty soon you’re drunk all the time and it becomes just as bad, if not worse, than the reality you were attempting to escape from in the first place. Only now, you need an escape from the escape, so you find something even stronger than the alcohol. And maybe that’s what turns alcoholics into addicts.

You can love a lot of things about a person but still not love the whole person.