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?

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

“If you think I’m letting you traipse around a foreign country by yourselves, especially in this political climate—”

lmao

All Baz has been able to focus on for the last year is Simon; he can’t see past the hearts in his own eyes.

If you can’t trust people with nose rings to be open-minded, who’s left?

But then I moved to California, where literally no one smokes, and having a cigarette now and then feels like toasting the Queen.

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

I’m actually holding my head, like someone who’s just seen their renovated living room on a DIY show.

this line sends me LOL

Everyone in America seems to drive a military transport.

Live dangerously.” Says the vampire teaching me how to drive.

“Thirty-one hours to San Diego?!” “That can’t be right,” Penny says. “That’s like driving from London to Moscow. Let me see.”

LOLLLL I’m surprised it isn’t longer tbh

You can’t have an adventure in three hours. (I mean, I have. But I’m a pretty extreme case.)

You might well expect hell to be hot, but you don’t expect it to also be humid. That’s what makes it hell, the surprise twist! The devil is clever!

Simon Snow, it hurts to look at you when you’re this happy.

“You’re so beautiful!” I shout back.

🥹

“I can see what you’re thinking, Basilton.

LOL not the full name 💀

“Please don’t choke to death, Bunce. Imagine the humiliation of dying at The Cheesecake Factory.”

“He said it’s impossible to tell me something I don’t want to hear!” Baz catches my eye, and we both grimace, because that’s absolutely true.

Baz is the only person I’ve ever wanted. The only person I’ve ever loved, like this.

Why would you go through the desert on a horse with no name? Why wouldn’t you name the fucking horse at some point?

I hate everything about this road trip, but if it’s going to keep drawing Simon out of his shell, I’d gladly drive to Hawaii.

Baz smiles at me. Like he hasn’t in a while. Like he almost never has, in public—like it’s easy.

“Off with your head!” she shouts at one of them, and isn’t that just what happens.

Penelope Bunce has decapitated one vampire and set two more on fire. She’s my mother’s daughter.

He’s at the other side of the square, swashbuckling out of a sword shop like the illegitimate grandson of Indiana Jones and Robin Hood.

They’re trading hits like clumsy steam engines.

He keeps reaching over to squeeze my shoulder or my arm. And it isn’t a question. There’s no hesitation. He’s just touching me because he’s happy. Because he’s high. And because I was there, I’m part of it, what’s making him happy.

He’s looking at me like I’m the Ark of the Covenant, and he’s Harrison Ford.

(Someone has built Stonehenge out of cars. This is the best thing I’ve ever seen.)

Baz and Simon are sufficiently distracting, in nearly every scenario.

real

Baz is truly frightening when he’s not pretending he’s not a vampire.

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.

(We literally have three “pickup trucks” in all of England, but here they’re everywhere. What is it that Americans have to pick up that the rest of the world doesn’t?)

I envy what he has with Bunce. They act like this is their tenth tour of duty together.

“If this works, my mother will be so impressed, she might grant me a last meal.”

“Dragons,” he whispers. “A herd of them. Asleep since God knows when.”

There doesn’t seem to be any part of this trip that he doesn’t relish. (Aside from the times when we’ve almost died.) (And, honestly, he seemed to enjoy those, too.)

I really hate riding back here. I feel like a cup of tea left on top of a moving car.

I’d give him all that I am. I’d give him all that I was. I’d open up a vein. I’d tie our hearts together, chamber by chamber.

ouch

“Braden, I know you’re in health care, but girls don’t like being called a ‘specimen.’”

Baz is standing in front of a full-length mirror, wearing—I swear to Merlin—a flowered suit.

Baz didn’t blink when we walked into this hotel, the theme of which seems to be What if Dracula opened a hotel and didn’t care whether everyone guessed he was Dracula?

Chaos may very well work in our favour.” Well, there’s Simon accounted for.

“Why are we leading the charge?” Simon demands. (If we weren’t leading the charge, he’d demand to know why not.)

I don’t understand this part of America. The heat, the sand, the small towns. Why would you live somewhere that seemed to be doing its best to tell you to go away?

I … am magic. Whether I like it or not, whether or not I claim it. Whether or not I carry my wand. It’s in me, somehow. Blood, water, bone.

It’s like getting ambushed by a heavily armed GQ spread.

Can I bleed out through appendages that didn’t originally come with my body?

Penelope Bunce is a fierce magician, I’ve never minded saying it.

“Why can’t you see that I wouldn’t be happy anywhere without you?”

:(