How to Belong with a Billionaire (Arden St. Ives #3)

by Alexis Hall

But the gulf between us had grown so impossibly vast that I wasn’t a person to him anymore. I was a problem to be contained. A mistake he’d made once. And that hurt most of all.

“I find people who boast about their prowess really hot.” But she only grinned. “That’s not a boast, poppet. It’s an amuse bouche.”

Very few adventures begin with a no.”

It’s not the rush that’s real. It’s the follow-through. Find out what something is and then you’ll find out if you love it.”

At the time, it had been confusing and actually a little bit humiliating, but thinking about it now filled me with a strange, sad tenderness.

“Stop saying that.” Oh fuck me. I was yelling. “I’m not his friend. I loved him. I still do. And I’m going home.” Reader, I got the fuck out.

Quietly we sat together, as we had at Oxford, except it was Boston we watched, gleaming on the silky waters of the harbour in shades of amber and scarlet and jade.

Things that may not be are infinitely beautiful. Things that are…well, they tend to be tedious.”

I know you say you’ve changed, and probably you have, but when it comes down to the colours of your dreams, and whatever makes your heart fly, and the things that really matter, you always get to choose.” “Choose what?” “What you take with you and what you leave behind.” I let out a shaky breath. “Because that’s all change is.”

You can’t expect to live a life you’re happy to look back on and not fuck it up occasionally. It’s not the fucking up that counts. It’s what you do after.”

It wasn’t the ending I’d imagined for us. Not the one I’d dreamed of and yearned for and nearly lost myself trying to bring about. But it was what we had. It was still our story. And that would be enough for me.

Sometimes it only matters what things are, not where they came from.”

But while my soul knew its equal, my heart knew its master. Even when the master didn’t fully know himself.