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

by Colleen Hoover

“There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.”

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

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.

Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes.

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

Just because we didn’t end up on the same wave, doesn’t mean we aren’t still a part of the same ocean.

I’m a statistic now. The things I’ve thought about women like me are now what others would think of me if they knew my current situation. “How could she love him after what he did to her? How could she contemplate taking him back?” It’s sad that those are the first thoughts that run through our minds when someone is abused. Shouldn’t there be more distaste in our mouths for the abusers than for those who continue to love the abusers?

Or maybe a raft, adrift at sea. And I scale over these huge waves, each of them carrying something different. Some are waves of sadness. Some are waves of anger. Some are waves of tears. Some are waves of sleep.

“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.”

We become a sobbing mess of tears and broken hearts and shattered dreams. We hold each other. We hold our daughter. And as hard as this choice is, we break the pattern before the pattern breaks us.

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.

I kiss her on the forehead and make her a promise. “It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.”

In the past, I’ve always said I write for entertainment purposes only. I don’t write to educate, persuade, or inform. This book is different. This was not entertainment for me. It was the most grueling thing I have ever written. At times, I wanted to hit the Delete button and take back the way Ryle had treated Lily. I wanted to rewrite the scenes where she forgave him and I wanted to replace those scenes with a more resilient woman—a character who made all the right decisions at all the right times. But those weren’t the characters I was writing. That wasn’t the story I was telling. I wanted to write something realistic to the situation my mother was in—a situation a lot of women find themselves in.