Wayward: Wayward Pines: 2 (The Wayward Pines Trilogy)

by Blake Crouch

The lights of a real, living city. The sense of a wide world brimming with diverse and fascinating people. The freedom to explore it.

Would he reach the point one day when he could shut that off? Just take these unexpected respites of peace for their surface beauty and forget the underlying horror? Was that how people managed to live here for years without losing their minds?

The inability to outwardly acknowledge one’s past or thoughts or fears. The inability to truly connect with a single human being.

It was the fakeness that killed her. The forced conversations about the weather. About the latest crop from the gardens. Why the milk was late. About everything surface and nothing real.

there’s joy to be had in just surviving. That you continue to breathe in and out because you can breathe in and out. Love the simple things you experience every day. All this natural beauty.

She was my always friend and my sometimes lover. We were at ease with each other,

Something shared and knowing in his eyes. The intimacy of an inside joke.

Unconditional acceptance. Not just of his body and mind, but also of something more, of something indefinably him. Ethan had never connected with anyone on this level. The most generous blessing and life-destroying curse all wrapped up in the same woman, and despite the pain of the guilt and the knowledge of how it would crush his wife, whom he still loved, the idea of turning away from Kate seemed like a betrayal of his soul.