What He Doesn't Know Quotes

“I learned the people we love usually turned out to be one of three things: a home, a holiday, or hell.” — Beau Taplin”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“No one is the same once they lose someone they love.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“Books aren’t meant to be in perfect shape,” she said when we reached her room. “They’re meant to be read, to be inhaled like oxygen.” Her fingers ran over the spine again, and she smiled. “This book has been breathed. It’s been loved.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“When I heard certain songs, they transported me to another time, to another place, and sometimes, to another person.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“If I am a river, you are the ocean. It all comes back to you in the end.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“Death changes us. It takes everything we thought we knew about our lives and fast pitches it out the window, shattering the glass in the process. Wind whips in, hard and cold, and throws everything we’d had neatly in place flying around the room. No one is the same once they lose someone they love. They just have to learn to exist in the new world, no matter how messy it is.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“A touch. A sigh. A man. A woman. Fingertips and lips. Moans and breaths. Old longings brought to life with new fervor, new discoveries uncovered with old, shaking hands. Freedom. Passion. Pain.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“But me and Charlie? We were magic. We were made for each other, plain and simple.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“But I knew Charlie. I loved her — truly loved her — not for who she used to be or whatever fantasy Reese had of her in his head. I’d seen her sick. I’d danced with her on her best days and helped her stand on the days she couldn’t bear the thought of it. I’d built a home with her, built a life with her, and neither hell nor high water could keep me from keeping the vows I’d made to her the day we were married.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“I hadn’t been a good husband. I’d buried myself in work to try to forget about our boys instead of remembering them the way I should have. In turn, I’d found myself with more responsibilities at work than ever before, simply because I never said no. I’d left my wife at home to grieve alone, without her partner, without the one who loves her more than anyone. I’d been forgetful and selfish.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“the simple truth is that I can’t not be with you anymore. I came to you because you made me forget I have a choice. I came to you because it’s always been you,”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“Those marks on your stomach, while they are forever a part of you, they do not define you. They are not a sign of your weakness or of your failure.” I smiled then, rubbing the pad of my thumb along her cheek. “They are a reminder of your strength, of your love, and of the miracle of life.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“I learned the people we love usually turned out to be one of three things: a home, a holiday, or hell.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“she didn’t attempt to fix the splitting of my soul. She only crawled into the fault line with me, giving me company in the hollow loneliness of it all.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“It was just a normal Monday. Until it wasn’t.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“One thing I knew for sure, I wasn’t going down without a fight. If I truly lost her, if he was to have her, he’d have to beat me in a fair fight. So, as the bartender slid me my check and I made my way back into the cold night, I cracked my knuckles and prepared for war.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“She gave him this dance. Now, I could only hope she’d give me the last one.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“Sometimes I wondered how many times my father had hit me before he beat the words out of me completely, before the idea of telling him — or anyone — how I felt seemed so pointless I couldn’t fathom it any longer. Charlie had been the one — the only one — to ever understand that about me. She’d let me love her with my actions, with my hands, with early morning breakfasts and bookshelves built in her honor. She read between the lines, finding the words I could never speak aloud, and for so long, it’d been enough for her. How stupid I was to believe it always would be.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“I’d been at the bar all night, ever since she left. I’d sat there at the very last bar stool, staring at my hands, fighting the urge to call her phone, knowing she wouldn’t answer — knowing I wouldn’t have the right words to say even if she did. I never had the right words. My voice had been stolen by an abusive father before I hit middle school, and I’d struggled my entire life trying to find it again.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“It was me, after all, who had shown my wife the dance, the moves, the steps and turns of infidelity. It was me who’d betrayed her first. And it was my fault she was in his bed right now.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“But if I was a river, and he was the ocean, then Cameron was the storm that raged over the point where we met. And lightning was about to strike.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“Charlie Reid was married, she was Charlie Pierce now, and still, it didn’t matter. I loved her, anyway.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“They say there are two sides to every story, and I suppose in most cases, that’s true. But the one I lived inside of? It had three. On the northeast side of Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, there was a house. But there was no longer a home.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“And a man. A man who also belonged to me. A man I no longer wished to keep. A man who, no doubt, had not slept, though the sun was rising now. Because that house where he waited — that large, desolate, haunting house — was where I’d laid my head to rest every night for the last eight years. Until last night.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“The house was once magical, once filled with love and joy and plans for the future. It was entirely too big for the young newlyweds who purchased it, both eager to fill the spare bedrooms with babies, to fill the expansive kitchen with little footprints and messy high chairs, to fill the walls with memories captured in sepia-tone photographs.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“Mount Lebanon.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“was an ant, and the song was the magnifying glass, setting the sun’s aim directly on me to burn me alive from the inside out.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“I’ll wait. I’d wait forever for you.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“She needed me like she needed air in her lungs, like she needed books in her hands, like she needed to feel whole again.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know

“you treat all your kids in your class as if they were your own. It’s who you are, it’s how your heart works.”
― Kandi Steiner, What He Doesn't Know