After We Collided (After, #2)

by Anna Todd

I won the bet, but I lost the only thing that has ever made me happy. And along with that, I lost every ounce of goodness she made me see in myself.

She could make me the happiest man on earth, or she could crush me with one word.

“The best thing about reading is to escape from your life, to be able to live hundreds or even thousands of different lives.

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. I look up at Hardin and swallow the tears threatening to form. His mother didn’t get me this. He did.

“She’s always there for me, Mum. She always forgives me, even when she shouldn’t. She always says the right thing. She calms me, but challenges me—she makes me want to be a better man. I know I’m a shitty person, I know that. I have done so much shit, but Tessa can’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone anymore, and I’ll never love anyone again—she is it for me. I know it. She’s my ultimate sin, Mum, and I’ll gladly be damned for her.”

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

I love him, but I have to love myself more.

“Just because he can’t love you the way you want him to doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you with everything he has,”

I know that no matter how much we fight, we will always find a way back to each other. Always.

I was raised better than to let a man dictate my future, no matter how deep my love for him is.

No one is truly innocent in this world, no one. The people who believe themselves to be perfect are the worst ones of all.