Luce stands at a crossroads of the paths that lead to the cemetery and the lake, having been invited to both those places by her respective boys.  Ooo, symbolik.

Come on, guys, symbolism only works when you don’t shove it down our throats.  Or, in Luce’s case, stand on it for several hundred words while ruminating.  That’s just painful and boring.

After way too long a time spent in flashbacks and justifications, she finally goes to see Cam.

Also, apparently they’re all skipping school for this, since Luce slept in until 2 in the afternoon and the boys are just sitting around waiting for her.  Why yes, you’re right, it is ridiculous that a reform school built around ‘problem’ teens who require supervision to make sure they don’t burn shit down or cut themselves would allow all this lazing about without so much as looking for the kids.  But as we’ve covered, this is a “reform school.”  For all we know, they get a bonus every time a kid dies.  Hey, it would make as much sense as anything else in this book.

Cam tries to justify his actions last night, and by “try” I actually mean “sidesteps the question of why he took her to a seedy bar and starts going on about how the other guy was such a jerk.”  So…didn’t try very hard, then.  Luce tries to figure out how to break up with a guy you’re not even officially going with, which is awkward enough without Cam pitching a fit about it.

When Cam goes on about Daniel’s shortcomings, he includes “he won’t even touch you,” and Luce spills about the make-out session the night before.  Cam is just as shocked as Daniel that she isn’t all deadified.

You know, if I was trying to sway a girl’s affections away from a murdering asshole, and I knew the other guy was a murdering asshole, I’d lead with that.

Instead of explaining anything, Cam just laughs at her until she leaves in a huff.  Well, she tries to leave in a huff, then Cam grabs her, physically restrains her over her repeated protests, and forces a kiss on her.

Damnit, book, why must you do this?  I mean, obviously Cam is supposed to be in the wrong here, okay, but now that the love triangle is officially dead, why feel the need to vilify Cam?  Is it some sort of retroactive justification for Luce’s choice?  Are you trying to scramble about and forestall any arguments that she should have gone with the nice guy, because look the nice guy is really not nice at all?

You know what’s really sick in this?  The sort of sly implication that if Cam really was nice, she’d be wrong for turning him down.  Throughout this book, one thing I’ve actually liked was Luce/Cam.  Well, as much as I can like anything through all that mind-numbing padding.  But, yeah, I liked that he was a nice guy and yet Luce still didn’t want him.  I thought her reaction to him was realistic, probably the only realistic thing in this book.  Of course there are perfectly nice guys out there whose company you can enjoy without feeling any actual chemistry, and of course that’s awkward and confusing, especially if he shows interest.  And of course Luce can turn him down.  Here I thought that was set up just perfectly well enough with the lack of attraction on her end, since she’s always been sort of ‘blah’ on the guy.  But all of a sudden that’s not good enough, no, now we need Cam to be ‘secretly evil’ or some such nonsense, so that Luce was ‘right all along’ for not wanting him.  Why can’t she just not want him because she didn’t want him?

And yet she felt something in her rise up, wanting her to respond, taking hold of the anger she’d felt only seconds before and blowing it away into nothing.

OKAY NOW I JUST WANT TO FUCKING STAB YOU AND SET YOU ON FIRE YOU FUCKING SHITSTORM OF A MOCKERY OF A NOVEL.

I already covered how utterly disgusting it is to pretend like ‘enjoying it’ negates a lack of previous consent in my Fifty Shades reviews, and I don’t want to get into that now, I’ll just be angry all day.

Thankfully, Gabby and Daniel come by to put a stop to that shit.  Gabbe lays the beat-down on Cam and literally kicks the snot out of him.  

“Gonna be a shame to have to beat up on you just when I touched up my manicure. Oh well,”

I love her.  Why on earth was she ever considered mean?

“What’s going on, Daniel?” Luce whispered. “How can Gabbe kick the crap out of Cam? Why is he letting her?”

Daniel half sighed, half chuckled. “He’s not letting her. What you’re seeing is only a sample of what that girl can do.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand. How—”

I get the feeling Gabbe is going to turn out to have powers to justify her asskicking abilities, which just makes me want to go beat someone for the sake of proving a point.  I mean, she’s not even doing anything physically unfathomable, she’s literally kicking him, girls have legs and can kick stuff, why is this confusing Luce?

Daniel led her toward a part of the cemetery Luce had never seen before, a clear, flat space where two peach trees had grown together. Their trunks bowed toward each other, forming the outline of a heart in the air below them.

Oh, come on.  That’s even worse than the crossroads.

Daniel gets her alone and says he’s going to explain everything, but typical of this book, he sure takes his sweet time with it.  God, I am so sick of all this padding.

“In the Bible, you know how God makes a big deal about how everyone should love him with all their soul? How it has to be unconditional, and unrivaled?”

…and that’s how Daniel begins the conversation of how he’s damned because he fell in love with Luce.  

…

… … …

Have you…just…not ever read any part of the bible, perhaps?  Because there’s a lot in there about loving thy neighbor and spouse and parents and children and ect ect ect.  Really, about the only love god takes exception to is idolatry.

Daniel, are you venerating Luce as a goddess?  Because, technically, that’s a different issue.

He goes on to explain, quite poetically and not very clearly, that he is immortal and every 17 years he meets Luce no matter where he goes to try and avoid it, and every time she falls for him, and every time it ends with her dead.  

“You kissed me,” Luce continued, searching for a way to put it all together, “and you thought I wasn’t going to survive it?”

“Based on previous experience,” he said hoarsely. “Yes.”

“That’s just crazy,” she said.

Absent from this conversation: Luce being upset that Daniel was tots willing to kill her for kisses.

Also absent from this conversation: Luce pointing out that he didn’t exactly try to run off when Luce showed up.  Seriously, like, what was stopping him from putting his thumb out and hitchhiking to Alaska as soon as he saw her?

He does point out that kissing isn’t always the kill moment, but it usually is, and apparently when she dies depends on vague mumbojumbo that has something to do with how well she remembers her past lives…or something?  Yeah, that’s not followed up on at all.

“I saw you that day, before you saw me. You were laughing with Roland outside Augustine. You were laughing so hard I was jealous. If you know all this, Daniel, if you’re so smart that you can predict when I’m going to come, and when I’m going to die, and how hard all of that is going to be for you, how could you laugh like that? I don’t believe you,”

…riiiiight, because that’s the part of this story that doesn’t make sense.  The fact that he was laughing for like half a second.  Wow.  Surely no one in the ever of everness has laughed for a moment, even if all their other moments are tense.

Daniel starts listing off all the previous places they’ve met, presumably because she lived in those places, and they include Rio, Jerusalem, Italy, Russia, Scotland, and Tahiti.  Yet Daniel recognized Luce on sight when she showed up here.  Was she a pale white Tahitian, or does he have some other way of recognizing her?

Luce has a hard to taking this all in, and she wants some time to go be by herself and absorb it.

And yet, I’m still stuck on the whole “really, you’ve been cursed by GOD, like real God, like can you prove He exists, because that would change a METRIC FUCKTON OF SHIT in this world if you could, forget this love stuff, can we talk about that?”

Seriously, he threw God out there and then just moved on like it was nothing.  Luce has even said she’s agnostic (ish), and hearing that there’s God AND HE CURSES PEOPLE didn’t even merit a blip on the radar?

Why even use that if you’re not going to…you know, actually use it?