Hook, Line, and Sinker (Bellinger Sisters, #2)

by Tessa Bailey

Don’t blush. Too late. She was a cherry tomato.

The warmth of his arm around her, the unsteady pound of his heart. How for the first time, she’d let someone into the music with her, instead of disappearing into it alone.

She was Eve in the Garden of Eden, and she’d just taken a bite from the apple.

Dumb heart. Dumb, pointless heart, please stop turning over.

There was no helping it. She felt like the sunrise coming up over the water after a bad storm.

“You’re enough when you’re not touching me,” she whispered,

Hearing the song was almost like having a conversation with Henry Cross. It was the closest she would ever come. This explanation of his conflicting loves—the sea and his family.

With his heart rupturing and repairing on repeat in his rib cage, Fox dropped his mouth down on top of hers and begged her with his tongue and lips to save him from the middle of the ocean where he’d been existing without her for so long.

What if she just stayed and stayed and stayed, so he could wake up every morning and feel fucking substantial and alive, the way he’d done today?

I love you more than life. Don’t go.

“How did I look at her?” He was afraid to find out. “Ah, son. Like a summer day showing up after a hundred years of winter.”

You can’t live life worrying about what people will think. You’ll wake up one day, look at a calendar, and count the days you could have spent being happy. With her. And no one else, especially the ones wagging their tongues, are going to be there to console you.”