ash’s Reviews > Barbed Wire Heart > Status Update

“I speed up. He follows.
All he ever does is chase. And all i ever do is run… but thinking about home always brings me back to him”

“Sometimes you’ve got to save people from themselves. Even if they don’t want it or know it”

“She’d been wild, searching for the kind of free most girls never even touch”

“I realize I’ve just scraped the surface. Of the evil in the world. Of the good.
Of the strength in every woman.”

“‘Hell is what’s waiting for you,’ he says, like it’s some sort of condemnation…
‘Any heaven that lets in men like you, I don’t want anything to do with’”

“I’d asked her once, what had drawn her to work at the Ruby, and she’d raised her eyebrow and asked me if she needed a tragic backstory to do the right thing. I’d turned red at being called out and apologized, because it was where my mind had gone”

“The Ruby had belonged to Momma, and it’s the one safe place in North County where a woman can go if she’s in trouble. Momma had a soft heart for strays. That’s the way people always put it, with this rueful smile. Like she was silly for caring. Like what she… did wasn’t fierce, protective, womanly instinct”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready… If I’ll ever be able to harden my heart enough for it not to break when I see bruises [on] throats… wrists, on tiny rib cages that haven’t finished growing… I start to wonder if maybe hardness isn’t the answer. Maybe the horror, fresh and present with each woman… bruise and tear, is what I should feel. Maybe hardening a heart is the problem. Not the solution”