More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Please know that this book is a follow-up novel to STILL BEATING and LOTUS. For the best reading experience, it is highly recommended that you read those two novels prior to starting this one.
the way i picked still beating for my first book by her then lotus. it was fated fr
It's also the time it took for him to lean in and kiss me.
this already hurts cause im still not over it
Oliver—who also happens to be my stepbrother—floats beside her in a unicorn-shaped innertube, sipping strawberry slush from a wide straw. “The water is only seventy-four degrees,” he deadpans. “That is the reason, I would deduce.”
“Chicken?” he wonders. “Yeah, the shoulder game.” “We will acquire poultry for shouldering?”
There is no hesitation this time. She shuts her eyes, holds her nose, and dives right in. And God… How I wish she’d do the same with me.
This was a shit idea. Tabitha is perched atop my shoulders, her thighs hugging my face to the point where I’m damn grateful for the arctic water soaking through my swim trunks.
Gabe. The man who’s only ever given me patience and stability, who has never once made me question my safety or welfare when he’s around. I hurt him. He’d never admit it, but I saw it in his eyes.
“Time spent loving another is never time wasted. In fact, I’m apt to believe it’s the only time that truly matters in this life.”
I’m alone because I haven’t been able to look at anyone but you since you stepped through my front door eight months ago.
and two green eyes instead of blue.
this is my 13th reason
“I think, sometimes, the things that frighten us become more bearable when you don’t have to face them alone,”
“I always wanted to be a father one day. The thought of never meeting my child is my greatest fear.”
Kill me now
can see you.” I blinked up at him, both mesmerized and bewildered. “See me?” “Yeah.” He swallowed. “I can hardly see you without my glasses. You’ve just been this…beautiful blur.”
proposed to you last month and it was romantic as fuck. You said yes, of course, because I’m irresistible like that. You couldn’t say no to that amazing ring I picked out, the dirty one with the stars that looks like I dug it up alongside someone’s grave. Money is tight, you know? But it’s fine because our love is everlasting.”
Tell him I died.
LMAO
“I’d give up all my basic needs for one single moment free from these chains. I’d sacrifice them in exchange for wrapping my arms around you and holding you tight.”
“I’d give up everything,” I croaked, “just to touch you one more time.”
A chance that I’ll go from her almost-everything to her everything. And maybe, one day, she’ll wear a real engagement ring on her finger. She’ll be mine.
“Rain check…on the date,” he murmurs, still holding onto that tiny smile.
“You’ve got it all mixed up, Tabs,” he tells me, our eyes locking together as his thumbs stroke the sensitive skin below my ears. “With you in the world, how can there be anyone else?”
“Are you getting to the third-act breakup in the story or something? The mood got weirdly tense.” “Third-act breakup?” “Yeah, like, in my mom’s historical romance books I sneak off to read when I visit her in Tennessee. There’s always this tragic turn of events that shakes everything up. I hate that part.”
Real
“He was braver. Stronger. Smarter,” she hisses back. “And he’s still dead.”
“Your daughter isn’t going to look at you and question the how and why of your existence in her life. She’s going to look at you and smile, because you’re here, and you’re her beautiful, perfect mother, holding her in two arms that fought for every second of being with her. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was cosmic design, maybe it was something we’ll never fully understand—whatever it was, it doesn’t fucking matter, Tabs.”
“Gabe, please…” “Give me the sun and the moon.” I press a kiss to her hairline. “Hand me the sea.” A kiss to her forehead, to her tear-streaked cheek. “Steal every star from the fucking sky…and I still have nothing.”
sobbing
“I believe that the sharpest minds find logic in the notion that logic cannot be found in everything. The smartest people know that they can’t possibly know all,” he told me, an air of fluidity in his tone. “The universe is too vast, too mysterious. Coincidence, fate, luck, dreams—those things can’t be discredited. Those things add another layer to the human condition and are just as important as science.”
“Remember…your p-promise. Live. Fight. Tell her…about me.”
“Maybe you’ll see it differently when you’re lying in your warm bed one day with the man you love, with a child sleeping peacefully down the hall, with a thriving, beautiful life filled with beautiful things.”
I don’t believe in forever; I believe in right now. And right now, I’m going to save the man who saved me.
I refuse to watch another man I love wither away to nothing before my eyes.
And I think we forget sometimes, the whole point of it all. We forget the beauty of living while we’re still alive.
“I think it does us a disservice to look at the stars and believe that they are only stars. There is too much we don’t understand and too much we can’t see to remain boxed into simplicities.”
“To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.”
