More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Calgary was a cosmopolitan oil and gas town, but even the wealthy wore cowboy hats and tooled leather boots.
Rocky because I was scrappy and loyal. He said people were prone to underestimate me due to my slight and dainty build, but they’d inevitably find out some day that I was a champion.
I clung to my uniqueness as if it were both a weapon and a shield.
“Because there is strength in softness too.
There is purity, success, and happiness in finding balance between yin and yang.
I wasn’t sure if something was deficient in my personality or something was wrong with my heart, but I couldn’t seem to connect with people easily.
It was all or nothing in games of the heart,
I was still standin’ there like a bastard tryin’ to figure out how to love a girl who desperately needed love when it was socially unacceptable for me to love her any more than I already did.
I guess it’s one thing to want to be known and another to actually have someone see you even when you try to hide.”
for a smart man, there is nothing to fear more than that which he doesn’t know.”
It was a distinctly Western habit to say “I love you” all the time.
“One hundred hearts would not be enough to carry the love I have for you,”
“One hundred hearts would never be enough to carry the love and pride I have for you, my Mei Zhen. Remember that always.”
The truth is, I don’t know how I’d survive without you. You make me feel safe, you know?”
I wanted a man to tremble as he held back his strength to touch me like I was made of glass, not because he thought I was weak, but because he thought I was precious.
I wanted Henning. Not as a father figure. But as a man. My man.
I knew I’d never love anyone better than I loved him
I had to be worth something even though I so often felt less than in the eyes of my overachieving family.
Maybe love was that simple, to see and be seen.
That I loved him. Not tenderly, not softly like a song or a poem. I loved him in all my dark places. In the way I would die for him, impaling myself on a sword intended for his side. In the way I would kill for him––a happy murder, a giggling death with blood on my teeth that tasted like love and sin.
Henning and his girls.
Damn, I was so going to hell one day.
He liked his belt more than his fists.
“My love for you isn’t conditional on you loving me back,”
“I’d pay any price for you,”
Fallen don’t turn against Fallen.”
You fell in love with someone because they felt like the only person who could see through your skin and bones straight down to the soul, and even knowing all of you––the good, the bad, the motherfucking ugly––they still accepted you.
“Mei, this is my best friend, Beatrice Lafayette. Bea, this is my Mei Zhen Marchand.”
So please, honour me by trusting that I want to give you everything and anything you need. Not just because of what’s happened to you. Not just because I promised Kate I’d look after you. But because I love you in a way that I need you to take what I have to offer, so really, you’d still be the one giving to me in the end.”
Sometimes the worst kind of people are attracted to the best kind of people, like moths to a flame, because they want to suck out your light and corrupt it.
“I’d die for her just as happily as I’d die for you. No amount of time will ever change that. And no amount of hate.”
“Hey, what about the big bear of a man, Kodiak? He’s hot,” I suggested with a waggle of my eyebrows. Cleo made a face like she’d swallowed a lemon. “No way, he’s way too bossy and rude.” “I don’t think I’ve heard him speak more than ten words, and he’s always around you.” “Yeah, well, I guess he saves them all up to boss me around,” she grumbled so mulishly I had to laugh.
“You do,” I bet, my voice a glistening blade sliding between his ribs, performing an autopsy without his consent. “You think about it in bed at night when the space beside you is too cold and empty. You think about it on the anniversary of his death every year and the anniversary of when you two met. You think about it when you look at Kasper out of the corner of your eye when you believe he isn’t looking. You can’t fool me, Jiang, because I know what it is to love in a way that never dies. And if that love is taken from you unjustly, I know what it is to live with revenge as your life’s
...more
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” he finally responded, the words slow as that same sap, dripping sluggishly in the cold room. “And I’m going to leave now before I do something I regret.” “Like hurt me?” I asked mildly. He levelled me with a cool glance. “Like hug you.”
“You’re the biggest mistake I ever made,”
Because the truth was he might have been the hero in my story, but I’d always be the girl who’d made his a tragedy.
“You are the human personification of a pain in my fuckin’ ass,”
Cleo’s two wildly different best friends seemed to get along well enough. I thought it was ’cause Mei was softer than she wanted to seem and Bea was darker than she appeared.
The truth was, no matter how hard I tried, she was always the first thing I noticed when I entered the room. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, even though her sheer loveliness was blatant, almost glarin’. It was that no matter where Mei was or what she was doin’, she did it with confidence. With purpose. She’d drawn the eye by sheer force of her magnetic personality. Once, if Mei’d told me she would do somethin’, however outlandish, I would’ve believed her ’cause she was just that powerful, that capable, even at seventeen. Now that she was grown, it was even more palpable.
“She’s the human version of a nightmare,” I retorted. Nova snorted. “Yeah, a nightmare you want to fuck.”
King literally called his woman his Queen and wrote her poetry. Nova’d secreted love notes into Lila’s tattoos years before he even admitted he was into her.
I refuse to believe that I’m not worthy of love and happiness. It’s hard to believe sometimes, but even on days when I want to die, I cling to that knowledge. I deserve happiness, no matter what’s happened to me. No matter the choices I made. And so do you.”
‘In Chinese or English, there are no words to properly express just how much missing you eats at me.
“A rebel on the street and a good girl in the sheets. Who would’ve thought.”
“even when I hate you, you’re mine”
Property of the Off-White Knight
“If I’m yours, though,” she murmured, pausin’ to bite my lower lip. “You’re mine.”
“I’d be yours forever, if you asked. Even if you never do, I already am.”
I’d never felt so wholly possessed in my lifetime, so seen and desired. It was everything I’d ever wanted.
“You so much as flinch, I’ll be there,”
