More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She made me feel like a man.
When I closed my eyes, I saw a girl with glasses too big for her face, and I heard the sweetest, most timid voice asking me if I still wanted to hold her.
could still see her—sitting on her bike outside the chain-link fence surrounding the school parking lot as she watched my friends and me on our skateboards that summer.
My first thought when my parents bought it was how she’d look in it.
boyfriend and I always took my girl home from school.
But the older she got, the angrier she got, and the more desperate I got in trying to forget her, and I just needed this to be over. Nothing got better with her. It just decayed. She was never going to lie in my arms in a bed that belonged to both of us. “I love you, Will,” she said in a quiet voice.
“The only time I ever loved my life was when I was with you.”
No one thought I was worth a damn next to them.
“I do…want you,” she whispered, crying. “It’s all about you.”
We’ve been through hell, and not everything is about you.” “Is it ever?”
“I need you,” he murmured. “You don’t know how much we all need you.”
“I’ll always want you,” she said quietly.
“Kai owns a dojo in Meridian City,” she told me. “Did you know that? It’s where our family trains.” I looked into her eyes, something unsaid passing between us, but I swore it sounded like an offer. But she was deaf, dumb, and blind if she thought I was welcome there. I had a job to get back to anyway.
he’s more patient than a crocodile.”
went months without touching it, deliberately avoiding the village so I didn’t have to see it, and eventually, I’d forced the finish, getting it done without the chandeliers I’d dreamed about, because it would’ve been too painful to remember him every time I looked at it.
I didn’t want to build or design. I didn’t want to do anything because of him.
Him wanting me with him last night wasn’t about us. I’d let myself enjoy it and let it mean more than it did when he swept me into his arms.
I never heard my own voice.
And it was my fault. I should’ve said it louder. I should’ve screamed. I hated that I had to, but it was my fault I fell quiet.
Will deserved to never be alone. But I also hated the idea of anyone else but me making him happy.
I’d be lost without some second chances myself.
There were always two sides to a story, and everything was just a matter of perspective.
It finally gave me permission to hate her and not just resent her because she had rejected me.
I hate her, but she’s mine. Go away, but don’t go with him!
What made her stronger than me was that she only did it once.
“There’s no one we make suffer more than those we love,”
Nothing else mattered. If it killed us, she was the one.
Someone to guide me. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it from my life since my parents were gone.
“The only thing more powerful than the heart is the brain, and it was so much more useful to get into your head than into your bed.”
My brother certainly wasn’t anyone to ensure justice for young girls.
Unlike Damon, I knew how to really hide a dead body.
“When nothing gave me a reason to get out of bed, my friends were falling in love, making babies, and I felt so alone…” I choked on the tears in my throat I wouldn’t let loose. “What do you think was the only thing that made me keep breathing?” My tone hardened as I clenched my jaw. “In my brain, I reached for you. I never stopped reaching for you.”
she was nothing.
When she was everything.
The amount of people who had played us like puppets for their own end, and the amount of time I wasted being ignorant of all of it and floating with the
current...
The hell he put Emmy through... I was angry and disappointed with her, and I’d never look at her again, but as much as I hated to admit it…maybe I understood how she thought she didn’t have any other choice.
“You never did see how much everyone needed you.” A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “You. Just the way you were.”
She could be that stubborn, and I knew what I had said to her, but I was mad. I didn’t want her dead.
“The role of the villain is only determined by who’s telling the story.”
Damon had been my savior on more than one occasion when life had proved there was so much gray.
They were like yin and yang, and I understood. I got it now.
Even if he never wanted me again, I owed him this.
I was making between the two men in Aydin’s bedroom.
It wasn’t about them at all.
“And you’re not going to fight me,”
“I’m tired of bleeding.”
I needed to change as much as I needed Will.
I needed to like myself as much as I loved him.
didn’t realize what a burden it takes off your shoulders to have guidance. I
