Things We Hide from the Light (Knockemout, #2)

by Lucy Score

Everyone was alive and breathing. Everyone but me. I was just pretending.

“Small towns are where busy professional women get seduced by a rough-around-the-edges local business owner. Ooh! Or a sheriff. Have you met the sheriff yet?”

This whole woe-is-me wallowing was really starting to piss me off, but I didn’t know how to climb out. Didn’t know if I could.

“Your gun is digging into me.” “That’s not my gun,” I said through clenched teeth. Her mouth curved wickedly. “I know.” “Then stop moving.”

“If you tell people what you want instead of askin’ them for it, you’re more likely to get what you want,”

“Feel like I’ve been waiting for Daze and Way my entire life. I’d go to the courthouse tonight if I could talk them into it.”

“I moved on, but my parents didn’t. I guess there’s something about seeing your only child nearly die in front of your eyes that changes a parent. So they worry. Still. Chalk that one up in the Things We Never Got Over column.”

Whenever you’re close, everything is better. The closer you are, the easier I breathe, the less I feel like life is just a never-ending pour of lemon juice into an open wound that won’t heal. You take away the dark, the cold. And you remind me what it’s like to want to be here.”

“I don’t worry about things like that. It’s one day at a time. As long as the good balances out the bad, I’m ready for the next day. It’s never gonna be easy. But we aren’t doing this for ease. We’re doing it to make a difference. Things like this? A thank-you from one of the ones who made it? That goes a long way.”

“I just wish I woulda kept trying to look to the light instead of sinking into the dark,” he said. “A man can learn to live in that dark, but it’s no life.”

You’re not responsible for how you were brought up, but you are responsible for your actions and reactions once you’re an adult.”

“Being vulnerable doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you trust yourself to be strong enough to handle the hurt. It’s actually the purest form of strength.”

What you do or have and how you feel are two separate constructs. For instance, people will say ‘I want a million dollars,’ but what they really want is to feel financially secure.”

I just know there’s nothing ballsy or brave about living your whole life behind walls. The real good shit doesn’t start until those bricks come down and you invite someone in. If you’re not scared shitless, you’re doin’ it wrong.”

the only way you’re going to know if he’s the one is if you treat him like he’s the one. He can either earn the title or lose it. That’s up to him, but you’re the one who has to give him the chance to earn you.”

aside? It didn’t have to be drugs or alcohol or whatever else people used to numb the pain of existence. It could be anything, anyone you needed just to survive, to wake up and start the whole horrible cycle all over again.

But I couldn’t fix him. I couldn’t open up those wounds of his and force them to heal.

“Sometimes you don’t have to weigh every single pro and con. Sometimes the answer is the one that just feels right.”