Buttons and Hate (Buttons, #2)

by Penelope Sky

“You would die before you let anything happen to me.” Conviction rang in her voice like the bell in the town square. Her unshakeable belief in me was both warming and heartbreaking. “And I would die before I let anything happen to you.”

The one thing I learned in life was never to let people know how much they hurt you. Keeping up a strong stance was essential to prevent people from hurting you further.

“You don’t have to be large to be strong. Strength comes from a place deep inside us. It’s the ability to deflect pain, to persevere when failure hits you in the face like cold rain. It’s refusal to break under someone else’s reign. It’s a lot of things. Size is irrelevant.”