Gleam (The Plated Prisoner, #3)

by Raven Kennedy

It’s time to start embracing who I am and what I’m capable of.

They weren’t what I expected. But somehow, they ended up being exactly what I needed.

“I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to try.”

“Though, it seems to me that trying and failing is better than giving up.”

“Shove down weakness, and strength will rise. You can’t be strong without conquering those weaknesses first. That’s what I think, anyway.”

Maybe it is better to try and fail than to be the given-up girl.

I’ve taken it personally, and I probably shouldn’t have, but you can’t reason with feelings. They do what they want, forcing you to endure. All you can do is grit your teeth and take it, hoping that time will dull it down.

“Pain shouldn’t be the requisite of beauty.”

But the eyes of liars are tricky things. They can show you what you want to see without ever reflecting the truth. It’s best not to look a liar in the eye. They’re so good at their own compulsions that their gazes hold steady, and then you’re the one who loses sight.

I’m a strongish woman. That ish is going to have to be good enough for now.

I just want to breathe. To stop planning, stop pretending, stop worrying, and just be for a moment.

Why does that make me want to cry?

How in the world can I be anyone’s good when I feel so bad?

Misery may love company, but anger thrives on it.

Right or wrong, trust or doubt, mind or heart. I’m at a fork in the road, and I can’t linger at its point anymore. I have to choose a path.

“Love happens in all kinds of ways. Fast. Slow. In bits and pieces, or immediate. Filled with lust, one-sided longing, a snap realization never noticed before. Deeply. Thoroughly. Love is a whisper we didn’t hear or a sound that drums in our ears and drowns out everything else.”

There comes a point in your life when you have to choose between having regrets and the possibility of making mistakes.

I love that I’m the person who’s put that look in his eyes.

“But that’s the curse of the survivors. We have to live with our dead.”

Sometimes, you look at the silver lining so much that you drift into denial about the clouds.

The jarring impact of this night is like being stuck under the brutish steps of a burden, heels driven down to squash me under its weight.

We are inherently protective of our lives, to do whatever we have to do to make it through.