Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3)

by Maggie Stiefvater

Blue touched his fingertips. Just this — He pinched her fingers lightly, just for a moment, and then he withdrew his hand and put it back on the wheel. His chest felt warm. This was not allowed.

Adam’s expression was ferocious and pleased; Gansey was at once proud to know him and uncertain he did at all.

She was furious at her body for betraying her, for wanting him differently than any of the other boys, for refusing to listen to her insistence that they were just friends.

“This isn’t you!”

HELPPPPP

Ronan was always saying that he never lied, but he wore a liar’s face.

But what she didn’t realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn’t all-encompassing, that wasn’t blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she’d had this kind, she didn’t want the other.

On the bottom, Ronan’s handwriting labeled it merely: manibus. For your hands.

AWWW I LOVE HIM

bed. The guilt and the worry had already worn off by the time his head hit the pillow, and all that was left was the happiness.

“Democracy’s a farce,” Ronan said, and Adam smirked, a private, small thing that was inherently exclusionary. An expression, in fact, that he could’ve very well learned from Ronan.

As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan’s eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practiced but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad, because it was vanity, really: See, Adam Parrish is wantable, worthy of a crush, not just by anyone, someone like Ronan, who could want Gansey or anyone else and chose Adam for his hungry eyes.

“You want to see what I’ve been working on?” Ronan asked. All casual. “Sure,” Adam replied. All casual.

sure all casual

Adam considered Ronan’s admiration of him. Someone like him treating someone like Adam as someone worthy —

His heart was a grave.

The scent of Cabeswater, all trees after rain, drifted past Adam, and he realized that while he’d been looking at Ronan, Ronan had been looking at him.

When he wasn’t trying to look like an asshole, his face looked very different, and for a tilting moment, Adam felt the startling inequality of their relationship: Ronan knew Adam, but Adam wasn’t sure he knew Ronan, after all.

and then he opened the door. It was his father. He opened the door. It was his father. He opened the door. It was his father.

i really like the repitition here ‼️

But in my head, everything is always so tangled. I am such a damaged thing.

he found himself intensely grateful for Ronan and Adam waiting outside for him, for Blue and her family, for Noah and for Malory. He was so grateful to have found all of them, finally.

He wondered if he was going to go through each year of his life thinking about how stupid he’d been the year before.

The only person who didn’t know Adam was himself.

but it was possible that all this time, the only person who needed to see that was Adam.

And something else: friendship of the unshakable kind. Friendship you could swear on. That could be busted nearly to breaking and come back stronger than before.

It was amazing that she and Ronan didn’t get along better, because they were different brands of the same impossible stuff.

He had not known to be born afraid, but he’d learned.