It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1)

by Colleen Hoover

“I feel like everyone fakes who they really are, when deep down we’re all equal amounts of screwed up. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others.”

Instead of helping others, people use the worst-case scenarios to excuse their own selfishness and greed.

Fifteen seconds. That’s all it takes to completely change everything about a person.

All humans make mistakes. What determines a person’s character aren’t the mistakes we make. It’s how we take those mistakes and turn them into lessons rather than excuses.

I think about how sometimes, no matter how convinced you are that your life will turn out a certain way, all that certainty can be washed away with a simple change in tide.

Maybe love isn’t something that comes full circle. It just ebbs and flows, in and out, just like the people in our lives.

Preventing your heart from forgiving someone you love is actually a hell of a lot harder than simply forgiving them.

“In the future… if by some miracle you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again… fall in love with me.” He presses his lips against my forehead. “You’re still my favorite person, Lily. Always will be.”

And as hard as this choice is, we break the pattern before the pattern breaks us.

In the last fifteen minutes, he lost the love of his life. In the last fifteen minutes, he became a father to a beautiful little girl. That’s what fifteen minutes can do to a person. It can destroy them. It can save them.

Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet. My mother went through it. I went through it. I’ll be damned if I allow my daughter to go through it.