Can't Get Enough (Skyland, #3)

by Kennedy Ryan

There are worse things to be guilty of than hope, but right now I can’t think of them.

“I don’t care how rich he is, she is the bag. He better not fumble her.”

We so rarely truly see people in their hurt. It’s even rarer not to flinch—not to look away from another’s pain.

but grief is a wave, washing in and washing out. Sometimes calm, and others a riptide.

There’s a softness to her that’s easy to overlook because of all that strength.

Even in the midst of wall-to-wall partygoers, with music blasting and liquor flowing freely all around, he saw me. Recognized there was a part of me completely removed from that scene and anxious about my mother.

“We are not magic,” she says. “We are resilient. It’s not a wand. It’s work. We work harder and shine brighter to survive. Excellence for us has been a matter of necessity. In a climate where less than half a percent of venture capital funding goes to Black women, women founders still perform sixty-three percent better than all-male founding teams in the first round. With those odds, we can’t leave our success to chance and we for sure can’t depend on magic.”

Is there a crueler fate than being trapped in a reality where you lose the love of your life over and over again?

It’s not fair. None of it is fair, and my rage and my sorrow run together down my face.

We’re both bold, presenting a tough exterior to the world, but it’s what’s soft and secret that keeps bringing us together.

Ambition for things and accolades is a bottomless pit. It’s all you can eat, but you never get full.”

“That’s everything because that means I’m good to you and you’re good to me. Being good to you means wanting what’s best for you. If there is an upper hand, baby, I don’t want it. I know I’m asking you to take a big risk, but all I can do is promise that I’ll never try to hurt you and I’ll do everything to protect you. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you don’t regret choosing me and I’ll protect your dreams as fiercely as I chase my own.”

They showed me over and over again that most of them couldn’t be trusted or relied on, and many weren’t secure enough in their own shit to deal with how secure I am in mine.

It’s not that I’m naive again, but that I feel safe enough with someone to allow myself these feelings. To allow myself to hope.

Strength is not always control. Sometimes it’s surrender.”

Are there words in the lexicography of human emotion for how it feels to lose the love of your life? It’s articulated in wails and tears, in the impenetrable loneliness that comes with losing such a vital part of who you are. Your person, closer than anyone to you, is now irretrievable, beyond reach. A mourning with no sunrise.