Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)

by Rainbow Rowell

I’ve loved him through worse. I’ve loved him hopelessly.… So what’s a little less hope?

When someone shows you who they are, believe them. That’s what I’m going to say when I break up with Baz. I’m doing it so that he doesn’t have to. I can tell he wants to end this. I can see it in the way he looks at me. Or in the way he doesn’t look

So I’ll be the one to do it. I can do it. One time, an orc-upine shot a needle into my shoulder, and I tore it out with my own teeth—I can handle pain. I just … I wanted a few more nights of this. Of him being here in the room with me, mine on the surface at least.

Baz always looks like he’s in an ad for expensive watches. Even when he isn’t wearing one.

But it was a mistake thinking of that as an end. There is no end. Bad things happen, and then they stop, but they keep on wreaking havoc inside of people.

It’s sitting in economy that’s making us gay.

He’s lovely. A bit of a sad mess. Dull and pale and rough round the edges. But still so lovely.

Penny says she has more to worry about as a brown person than I do as a winged person.

Trauma affects memory, my therapist said. Your brain closes off painful corridors. “That sounds good to me,” I told her. “Thank you, brain.”

Simon Snow, it hurts to look at you when you’re this happy. And it hurts to look at you when you’re depressed. There’s no safe time for me to see you, nothing about you that doesn’t tear my heart from my chest and leave it breakable outside my body.

Imagine dating a legend.” That’s the trouble. I don’t have to.

“Come on,” he says. He’s still smiling, at least. I want to take his hand and keep him here with me, in the weeds. “Are you still mine?” I’d ask him. “Do you still want this?” But I don’t. Because I don’t want to hear him say no.

Crowley, if this is what it takes to keep Simon in my arms—gunshots and Quiet Zones and high-speed chases—I’m here for it. I’ll swear to it. I’ve found my vocation.

My favourite part of kissing Simon when he’s cold is the way he goes warm in my hands. Like I’m the living campfire. Like I’m the one who lives. I warm him in my arms, and then he warms me in his. He gives it all back to me.

Simon, Simon … You were the sun, and I was crashing into you. I’d wake up every morning and tell myself … I’d tell myself …

“Baz, you wouldn’t have to hide anymore!” “I’ll always have to hide! So will you!” “Why can’t you just admit that you’d be happier here?”