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

by Abby Jimenez

“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.”

“If you can choose anger or empathy, always choose empathy, Justin. It’s so much healthier than anger. For both of you.”

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

“You didn’t leave,” I whispered. “I will never leave you,” he said tiredly. “I mean, unless you tell me to. I’m not a creep.”

“Sometimes I feel like the seasons could come and go and come and go, a hundred years could pass, a thousand, the ground could collapse under us, this house could crumble and go back to the earth, and we would still be standing here frozen in time, because every second I’m with you is eternal. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

“I want you to know that your empathy is beautiful, Emma. I hope you never lose that. I do hope that one day you get some boundaries though.”

Because when you’re in love, you do hard things.

“You’re not asking too much,” he said. “You were just asking the wrong person. Ask me instead.”

“I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since the moment I laid my eyes on you. And I know we haven’t known each other long, but I don’t care, because it’s true and it’s there, and it doesn’t matter to me if it makes sense or not. I’ve been waiting my whole life to feel like this and I thought it was a curse that nobody else ever worked out. But it wasn’t. It’s just that they weren’t you.”

Grant House was where I lived, but it wasn’t home. Justin was home. The kids were home. Justin was right. Home wasn’t a place, it was a person. For me it was a whole family.

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.

It isn’t glamorous, it isn’t all butterflies and stars in your eyes. It’s real. This is the kind of love that forever is made of. Because if it’s this good when life is draining and mundane and hard, think of how wonderful it will be when the love songs are playing and the moon is out.

“I didn’t have a choice with you,” I said. “I couldn’t keep you out. I want you to know that I loved you at first sight, Justin. It just took me a really long time to be able to tell you what I saw.”