Just for the Summer (Part of Your World, #3)

by Abby Jimenez

I could be in the tornado, or I could be in the eye. But I could never be out of the storm.

“I don’t think you’re a horrible person. I think you went through something horrible and that’s who you needed to become to get through it.”

“Be glad you don’t get it. It means your life has been a lot gentler than hers.”

“Unhealed trauma is a crack. And all the little hard things that trickle into it that would have rolled off someone else, settle. Then when life gets cold, that crack gets bigger, longer, deeper. It makes new breaks. You don’t know how broken she was or what she was trying to do to fill those cracks. Being broken is not an excuse for bad behavior, you still have to make good choices and do the right thing. But it can be the reason. And sometimes understanding the reason can be what helps you heal.”

It’s funny how when you find someone you like as much as I liked her, the destination is suddenly wherever they are. Even if there’s someplace better, you wouldn’t go if they couldn’t come.

She asked for pictures—” “To show people. Because it doesn’t fit the narrative that she’s a loving and doting mother if she doesn’t even have pictures of you to show people while she’s taking credit for your accomplishments.”

I know this is hard, but good things can still come out of it.”

Not everything that comes out of crisis is bad. Sometimes your traumas are the reason you know how to help.

This wasn’t like anything I’d ever known. I wanted him to hold me after. To wake up with me in the morning and eat cereal in my bed while we watched TV. I wanted to see his pajamas on Christmas morning and find out what he looked like with birthday candles lighting his face and snow in his hair. I wanted to be tangled in him, in all his limbs and all his strings.

The best kind of love doesn’t happen on moonlit walks and romantic vacations. It happens in between the folds of everyday life. It’s not grand gestures that show how you feel, it’s all the little secret things you do to make her life better that you never tell her about.