Joyce’s Reviews > The Kill Clause > Status Update

For all his flaws, he’s the only person other than my mother whom I ever really loved, the way you love someone because of all their flaws and broken places, not in spite of them.

“Everything dies.”

“But not everything kills.”

“I don’t want to live in this world without you in it, even if you don’t want us to be together,”

As a woman, you have to hope it never comes down to hand-to-hand combat. His weight is crushing my chest; his knees pin my arms. If it comes down to strength and weight, a woman in a fight is fucked.

You were powerless. Defenseless. That’s the condition of childhood. We’re at the mercy of our parents’ choices.

I have a go bag. It’s in the well of my trunk, where the spare should be.

SPOILER!!!

His last text: the knife and the Santa emoji. Kill Claus. Fuck.

Sometimes you have to hurt yourself to help someone else.

Bryce meets me at the door wearing a hooded cashmere sweater and a pair of tattered sweatpants torn at the knee. It’s his stealth-wealth look.

When I was younger, I believed everything Nora said. Lately, it’s starting to sound like bullshit. Maybe that’s what she means when she says she feels like my heart isn’t in it anymore. Maybe that’s just what people say when you stop buying whatever they happen to be selling.