Beyond Words (The Hutton Family, #1)

by Abby Brooks

Every hope. Every dream. Every plan I had for the future. Before, I had purpose. Since the incident, I merely existed. Life was little more than a string of days to get through.

After all these years, after all we’d been through and run from, the news was anticlimactic. The sun still shone. The ocean still roared. The gulls still squawked and circled. Life still ticked by for the rest of the world, their existence unaffected by our tragedy. While I fought for my life in a hospital bed in Germany, the Pats won the Super Bowl. Fans celebrated. Babies were made. No one but a small circle of people knew or cared about my struggle.

Even the most groundbreaking events of our lives were nothing more than blips on the radar. No matter how hard things seemed while we were living them, we would move past them and find better times. We all carried scars. We just had to learn not to limp.

Time to fly, baby girl. Spread those wings and stop coasting.

“This is my chance for a fresh start. Shed my old skin. Step out of whatever rut I’ve dug for myself and make things interesting again.”

If there’s a part of you that’s whispering, you have to listen. Life is meant to be lived, not survived.

The way I see the world is a constant question mark because I want freedom as much as I want security and I want stability as much as doing the same thing every day bores me.

Why lost? Why confused? When there’s hope, cling to that. Life is crazy and change is inevitable. Sometimes it’s violent. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it’s both. The best any of us can do is know what we need and learn how to be happy along the way. To find a handful of people who cherish us and hold them close, because this journey is a doozy.

The things that matter most aren’t actually things. They’re the odd moments of understanding. The breath in our lungs. The blood in our veins. The smile on the face of someone you love, of someone who loves you in return.

“The whole world is caught up in timing, as if there’s a perfect time for everything to happen. Like we can schedule ourselves right down to the minute. It’s not natural. If the right person appears in your life, does it really matter when?”

Change sucks and it’s easier to settle for the devil we know than to risk opening our life to the possibility of even more hellfire and brimstone.

Life is movement, sometimes fluid and graceful, sometimes harsh and jolting, but things are always moving and changing. I don’t want to ‘arrive’ because that means it’s time to stop. I fought too hard to ever stop again. Life is supposed to be about the journey, but all too often, we’re so focused on where we think we’re going, we never appreciate where we are. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I would finally be happy when I achieved this goal, or obtained that thing, only to get there and find myself still craving more. So I’d change the goal. Or find a new thing. It’s a constantly moving goalpost of unfulfillment.

Life is too short and too fragile not to say what you mean and go after what you want. Why sit frozen in fear when you can move?

hurt and confused and wearing the kind of scars that rip through a heart and soul—the kind that come when love was given and then taken away without reason or explanation. The kind that leaves you wondering what would make someone wonderful stop looking at you like the whole damn world lived in your eyes.

We all put up fronts, these pleasant façades that we wear for different people. We have one for strangers, one for acquaintances, one for people we want to impress. How are we ever supposed to know if we’re dealing with the façade, or if we’ve finally met the real person? What if the façade never drops? Are we always walking around, being someone less than true to ourselves in order to be what we think other people want?

We’re still wearing masks. Afraid to take them off, even when we’ve never met face to face. And maybe I like it that way because I’m scared. After Nash, maybe I’m not ready for anything more than a pleasant façade. Maybe I just want to daydream about you being perfect so I don’t have to worry about what happens when the mask comes off.

“It’s hard to find our place when it feels like the sand keeps shifting beneath our feet.”

“We’re all lost, babe. All of us. If anyone tries to make you believe he knows what he’s doing, he’s full of shit. Every day is nothing more than trying to find your way forward. The trick is figuring out how to turn the confusion into a good time, otherwise life is going to suck.”

“The moon makes it look like you’re wearing a halo,” he said. “Like you’re an angel, come down to take care of me.”

I wanted to devour his terror and bring him peace.