More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Do the folks know?” So that’s how he’d play it, then: let Dad be the bad guy and reserve the right to trounce Ronnie if he so much as slipped up. Sneak attack style.
she’d spent too much time hanging out in front of liquor stores, asking passersby to buy her a six-pack, and falling in love with a much older biker.
It was never her family or her life that had caused her pain, but the world outside of it.
“You don’t belong in the swamp. None of us do.”
But she is too wild and strong a beast for any of us to own. Never forget that.
“What the hell’s wrong with this generation?” “Participation trophies,” Mercy said. “And Adderall.” Collier nodded in agreement.
He was beautiful, in the way that a Doberman was beautiful: better looked at through a fence.
Walsh was smoking and cleaning the dirt from under his nails with a switchblade.
Her hands trembled. Ghost curled a thick lock of her blonde hair around his hand. “I know, baby, I know.”
His profile was regal, like it belonged on a coin. And a little cruel, if she was honest. She’d been raised by cruel-looking men; she found a certain comfort in the things other girls found frightening.
But she’d been jailbait. She’d been a mom at seventeen. She knew what it was to have a heart that sang a siren’s song to deeper waters, and older men.
Right now, she was glad to have a six-five monster watching over her baby.
Other girls could wheedle cars and gifts and larger allowances from their fathers. Hers was immovable in all things.
She looked at writing as an individual art, as a true expression of her heart.
Her body wanted him, and her heart already loved him.
It wasn’t bad, she admitted. But even the faintest praise from Mercy melted her insides.
Too hard, she’d pushed too hard. But all she’d done was look at him!
But her anger had nothing on that which lived in Ava’s DNA.
he didn’t know what to do with her feelings. He wouldn’t stop baiting them and he wouldn’t discuss them. Bastard.
“She’s too distracted and she daydreams in class. She’s into someone, big time. And it’s you.”
“I knew that would happen – eventually – that she’d catch someone’s eye. But I’m not ready for it, ya know?”
But now she had doubts; she didn’t know what to make of him, and that hurt – worse than he expected.
“Because I don’t know you anymore, Mercy. And it scares me.” “I scare you? Me?” He scared every damn body, but not her, not his fillette.
He could read it in the way her body pressed to him: Please. Please, I need it too. Please. Please…
“Come on, sweetheart, unlock it.” She forced her tongue to move. “Why?” “Because…I didn’t do it right.”
It was the reputation that mattered. It was the reputation Maggie planned on exploiting.
He must have been by himself, because a smile colored his voice as he said, “I married a smart kid, didn’t I?” “You bet your ass.”
Tired from what, Ava? Tired from what?
“Your mom’s smart,” Mercy had said. Yes. Yes, she was.
The little shit! The little douchebag, football-playing shit had come again!
She was just Ava, and the three letters of her name held an essential meaning for him, one that he didn’t have to justify or explain to himself.
It was so perfect, and it was so disastrous. And they’d be sliced to bits before it was all over.
She just liked the idea of putting words from her head into his hand, dreaming foolishly that it might make him smile.
“Dude, if I didn’t think I’d walk in on my sister naked, I’d come in there and kick your ass.”
He’d only ever sponsored two – he wasn’t big on the mentoring – and that had been Aidan and Tango, both together when they’d prospected at sixteen. That hadn’t been much different than parenting.
The world could be explained away as the ink rolled off the tip of a pen.
“They had mac & cheese,” Littlejohn said. “That’s what gets me through a hangover, but I didn’t know what your food was, so I just went for the meat.” “Meat is good.”
He shrugged and glanced away. “You were rude to me.” Her mouth fell open. “Rude to you.”
He liked to learn things; that trait was sexier than all the tattoos and the motor oil and calluses.
And thus the queen had restored order to her kingdom.
But it was the knight who was devoted, who was in her thrall and would die defending her.
This wasn’t a fresh start, but a return to what had been. A do-over.
She felt her smile widen. Mrs. L. That’s who she was now. No longer just Ghost’s daughter, or Aidan’s little sister, but Mercy’s wife.
The scariest boy of all is your son, and you did everything you could to make him hate you.”
He hated those groupies, really, because they reminded him so much of Dee.
He thought he caught a whiff of Daddy’s aftershave, but that wasn’t possible. Because Daddy was dead.
“No, you’re not dreaming,” Maggie said with false brightness. “We showed up.”
You’re falling, stupid! a voice screamed inside her head. Falling. Yes, falling…like
“What I know,” she said quietly, “is that everyone in his life who loved him, or claimed to, allowed him to get hurt. Badly. His whole life. That stops with me. I love him. And I won’t let him get hurt anymore.”
“Don’t worry about it. Take that monster and his little girl home.”
