In the Likely Event

by Rebecca Yarros

this is what it takes to get your phone number? A girl has to haul herself into a war zone?”

“Don’t, Izzy.” He shook his head. “I have one weakness on this entire planet, and you’re feet away when you’re supposed to be halfway round the globe.”

because that look, the same one she’d had as we’d held hands during that crash ten years ago—scared and somehow trusting—made her feel like mine again.

boy names, right up there with Chad and Blake. But douche or not, he was the one she’d chosen. I was just the one willing to fly into a combat zone for her.

go. It wasn’t her fault that I still loved her. It was mine.

that was how well I knew the song. It was another one of her favorites. But I was the one who needed to let go.

“If no one’s trying to kill you here, then that means I’m doing my job over there. That’s how I choose to look at it, how I have to look at it.”

“You know the best part of not defining this?” “My begrudging freedom?” I muttered. He laughed. “No. The possibilities, Izzy. That’s what we are. Possibility.” Possibility.

Stop walking the path Mom and Dad laid for you unless it’s the one you want.”

I made a mistake thinking that what I felt for you could grow if I gave it enough time. I made a mistake giving in to what my parents wanted just because it was comfortable, because I thought I’d finally earn their approval. I made a mistake in settling for someone who obviously doesn’t know the meaning of love, or devotion, or exclusivity. I will never be what you want, and you will never give me what I deserve. I made a mistake when I said yes, and now I’m remedying it.”

It didn’t matter who I met, who I dated, or who I tried to love. Nate would always be in the way, even if he was never physically there.

Navarre. Gravity shifted beneath my feet. Isabeau’s lover, cursed to only see her at dawn and dusk. Doomed to love her but never touch her. Never hold her. Never make a real life together.

and you still do, but I love you, Isabeau. I’ve only loved you. I’ll only ever love you. And I was supposed to do this in the water, or maybe even the plane—kind of circle back to how we met, you know?”