Code of Conduct (Cipher Security, #1)

by April White

“Imagine the possibilities of a person who can hold her leg behind her head.” I conveniently forgot to mention that said leg wouldn’t actually be attached to the rest of me at the time.

“A word only has the power you give it. Truth is just five letters unless the promise of it is honored, and trust – those five letters are meaningless without a whole lifetime of evidence to back it up.” – Gabriel Eze

He smiled without a trace of wariness. Oh, to be a young, white guy with no natural predators.

All those stern lectures to myself about how this wasn’t a thing and thinking otherwise was just setting myself up for disappointment flew out of my brain and landed, flopping like a fish, on the table between us. I had to look away from his gaze so I didn’t accidentally lean over the flopping fish of managed expectations and kiss him.

“What Dan did was just a version of the basic assessments humans do to other humans to categorize them into friend or foe, safe or dangerous, tribe or stranger. As a white man in America, he’s at the top of the food chain, so his check was for dominance. Mine as a woman is usually for threat level, and I can only guess at yours.” He was silent for a long moment – long enough that all my noisy self-doubt conversations started talking at once, mostly about how I had no business discussing race because I couldn’t understand what his experience had been. “I look for their fear,” he said quietly.

Luggage lust? That’s a thing?” We passed one of the art installations along the trail, and the breeze had stilled in the park. “It is but one form of the more prevalent leather lust, a close cousin to shoe and boot lust, and distantly related to old-fashioned shaving brush lust. Of course it can’t hold a candle to wristwatch lust, or even fine linen lust, but it certainly has its devotees.”

“Names are like superhero suits – they have to fit right to have power, and sometimes they just don’t work off the rack.” – Shane, P.I.

Shane wielded her size as though it were her right – as though she had chosen her height for its advantages and would be using each one as it pleased her to do.

perhaps the pretense of British civility has no place in the war zones of the rest of the world.”

My normal M.O. is to let something like what you just said slide, even though I’m totally intrigued and want to ask all the questions. Because I know that if I start digging, then you get to ask questions in return, and before you know it, we’re having an actual conversation with sharing and stuff.”

“The most painful beatings are the self-inflicted ones.” – Miri Eze

“I actually have two legs. One just likes to dress up as a steampunk Goth.”

“I taste you in my dreams,” he murmured against my mouth. “I think about kissing you ten, fifty, a hundred times a day.”

“You could never be normal. Extraordinary is not normal. Stunning is not normal. Brilliant is. Not. Normal.”

Any man who has ever had an honest conversation with another man knows they don’t generally happen face-to-face unless dominance is at play. The best ones are in the car, or on a trail, or shoulder-to-shoulder at a football match. Voices are hard enough to navigate, but pain or confusion in another man’s eyes make us too vulnerable to our own.

“Sometimes the loudest things in the room are the words we don’t say.” – Gabriel Eze

“You can be afraid and still strong, still fearless and indomitable. You can be afraid, and you can trust, and then when you’re ready, you can let go of the fear. Fear muffles you. Let it go, and then you can live out loud again like you’re meant to.”

“As a black man, I hope one day I have as many rights as a gun.” – Gabriel Eze

“If it’s ugly, make sure it’s hot pink so everyone knows it’s on purpose.” – Billy “Sparky” Spracher.

“We’re taught that parents are the ones we’re supposed to trust to protect us, and if they do their jobs right, we get to learn self-reliance in a safe and secure environment. But when they screw up – and boy, do they screw up – parental betrayal is possibly the worst thing a person can ever go through. When the person you trust most in the world tells you you’re shit, you either believe them, or you break.”

“Whatever words get said in the heat of anger, or cold fear, or even calm conversation, it is your choice to believe them, and your choice to give them meaning. Because you know what? They are just words, and the only power words have over us is the power we give them.”

“We have trouble believing the good things people say – how smart, or interesting, or remarkable we are – but we have no trouble totally owning the bad stuff. If I’m going to give words any power at all, I’m going to make damn sure it’s the ones that light me up like a sunrise, you know?”

Characters who don’t change and grow with each life experience turn into caricatures. They’re cardboard cutouts of people who eventually become boring because they’re predictable. But to grow you need to take risks, and this thing with the hunkster was the first real risk I’ve seen you take in a long time. Gamora takes risks, no matter how scared she is, and that’s what makes her interesting. Be Gamora, Shane. Take the risk.”

“Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.” – Fiona Archer

Apologies are what inevitably happen when you allow people to matter to you.”

“Falling kisses are the ones that whisper like snowfall in a great forest, filling the silent spaces with perfection. They make you feel as though you are the only two people in the whole world who understand.” – Miri Eze

Your scars are beautiful because they mean you’re alive, and when I kiss them it’ll be in reverence for what you’ve survived and who you’ve become because of them.”