More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Thank you.” “You’re welcome, and I also got you some mini Reese’s.” Those were my favorite. They had the perfect ratio of chocolate to peanut butter.
Emmy liked to have background sound—music, TV, whatever—while she was doing things. She said it helped her focus.
“Did you do this for me?” Her voice was quieter now. “Yeah,” I said. She bit the inside of her lip. “Why?” That felt like a loaded question. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about her, because I wanted her to be happy at Rebel Blue, because I wanted her to think about me the way I thought about her. “Because you told me it was your favorite food” is the answer I settled on, which was also true.
“and most of the time, I feel like I let her down.” Hearing her say that sent a knife to my heart. Ada was magnificent, and I wanted everyone to see it—to see her.
It was new and exciting, but it also felt stable and natural—like it was the start of something that would last.
But I wish I could go back and tell myself not to fight so hard to stifle myself and push myself into a box that I would never fit into. I cut off so many pieces of myself trying to fit into his box, and I was just starting to get all of them back.
Thunder clapped again—closer this time—and it made me jump. Wes reached his hand across the bench seat and held mine again. I let him. He used his thumb to draw soothing circles on my hand, and when he needed to change gears, he brought both of our hands to the gearshift, just like that first day in the truck.
When I reached him, I grabbed his arm and turned him toward me. “You can’t leave her there!” I shouted. “She needs you!” I didn’t know where they came from, but there were tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, pushing against them, desperate to fall. “You can’t leave her alone. She can’t be alone. Not in this storm. Couldn’t she die out here?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “Please,” I begged. “Don’t leave her alone.” Wes’s green eyes were soft as they studied me.
“Sweetheart,” he called. That was me.
“But she’s good?” I asked again. “All taken care of?” “Yeah, why?” I grabbed Wes’s hand and pulled him toward the door. “Because someone needs to take care of you now.”
I wasn’t really a caretaker. I didn’t know how to be one, but I would do my best for Wes.
“Rhodes.” “What?” I whispered, not moving my hands from his body. “My middle name is Rhodes,” he said. Weston Rhodes Ryder. That’s a good name, I thought. It was the last thing I remember thinking before he kissed me.
This man was on his knees and looking up at me like I was the most precious thing in the world.
“And then you showed up here, and for the first time in my life, I felt lucky.”
I basked in his sunlight.
Ada wasn’t a giggly woman, but she giggled for me, and it made me feel like I could run through a wall. In a good way.
“This is perfect.” So are you, I thought.
The woman who told me she didn’t like country music named a calf after Loretta Lynn today.
Ada had changed into a hoodie and sweatpants and was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
“You okay?” I asked, starting to worry that she had already started running from me in her head.
My identity has always been who I am in relation to my siblings, so when one of them was gone, my entire being was thrown out of whack.
Ada laid her head on my shoulder. She didn’t say anything—she didn’t have to. For years, I had desperately wanted someone to just…be…with me. To sit next to me while the power was out and weather the storm together.
Emmy and Teddy paused their conversation, stood up from the bed, and started to hoot and holler. The two of them could get jobs as professional hype women. They felt so genuine.
“If you had to pick your favorite feature from the waist up, what would it be?” I had to think about that for a second. No one had ever asked me that before, and I’d never thought about it before. “Honestly,” I started, “my boobs.” As far as boobs went, I thought they were nice. “And my tattoos.”
The woman I saw in the mirror was comfortable. She still enjoyed solitude, but she didn’t feel lonely anymore, and for someone who’d felt lonely her entire life, that was worth everything.
He put the boxes of pie on my lap and placed a quick kiss on my temple before shutting the door.
“Okay, then. I trust you to do your job, Ada. If you’re not worried, I’m not worried.” Wes shrugged his shoulders. “And if you were worried, we’d figure it out together. This project is both of ours.”
I admired them. I thought it was a special thing to love something that much.
At his core, Weston Ryder was gentle, and I thought that was the best thing that a man could be.
Wes’s energy for the things he loved was contagious.
Honestly, I thought there were a lot of things that no one else knew because I didn’t know if anyone actually knew me, or if anyone ever actually wanted to.
I was proud of what this house had become, but I was even more proud of the woman who’d led the charge. I was more than happy to be an accessory to her greatness.
“Luke Brooks is without a doubt the love of my life, but my soulmate has always been Teddy Andersen.” “That’s fair,” I laughed, despite the pang of jealousy in my chest. I didn’t have a friend that I could say that about.
“No, it was good, honestly. I would’ve felt bad if you’d fallen, but I like the zeal.” Zeal, I thought. That feels like a compliment.
“If you like who you are, why is it so hard to believe that other people do too?”
At this point, I was pretty sure I’d been waiting for her my whole life, so an hour was easy.
“Ryder Day is for our family, but our family is more than just the one we’re born with,”
I was grieving all of the parts of myself that I lost or gave up in the name of comfort because I would rather have been comfortable than happy. I chose to prioritize my false sense of security instead of me.”
Now I admired those qualities even more because I knew that everything she was, was on purpose.
Amos’s eyes had gone soft, and his tone was ardent. I used to doubt that Wes was as good as he seemed, but the more time I’d spent around the Ryders, the more I realized that all three of them—even Gus, who was a lot grumpier than the other two—were the product of a devoted father, who loved them so loudly they couldn’t help but be good people.
“Ah.” He nodded. “The one Wes is smitten with.”
“Clearly,” I said with a chuckle. “But I’m not sure ‘smitten’ is the right word,” I added, trying to downplay what I was feeling. “I am.” That was Wes’s voice.
Gus rolled his eyes. “I don’t want to hear about the dreams you have about me, Theodora.” “Nightmares,” Teddy corrected.
That thought made my stomach curl, and I set down my fork abruptly. There was a lot of chatter going on, so no one noticed—except Wes. He always noticed. “You okay?” he whispered.
Wes looked at me the way I looked at the sunset, and I wanted to run and hide. There was just so much…feeling when he looked at me.
Every page looked familiar to me, as though I’d seen it before. But it wasn’t until I flipped the page again and the roses, leaves, and thorns were drawn onto the sketch of an arm and shoulder that I realized why these images looked familiar. It was because I saw them in the mirror every day.
“These sketches,” I whispered. “Are they…” “Yeah,” he breathed before I could finish. “Why?” I said softly. “You know why,” he said.
“Oh, so that’s what you’re trying to do, push me away.” Yes, I thought. “Well, guess what, sweetheart? You can push all you want, but I’m not going anywhere.”
“I can see you’re confused.” He stepped closer to me. “So let me break this down for you: I fucking adore you, Ada. You are, without a doubt, the most brilliant and purposeful woman that I’ve ever met, and I would be the stupidest man alive if I let something as stupid and surmountable as distance take you away from me.”
“I know you.” “No, you don’t. Those are all little things. Tiny things.” “The little things are the big things, Ada. They’re the things all the big things are made of. I might not know you all the way, but I want to, and I’m just asking you to give me a chance to do that.”
