This isn’t happily ever after. It’s so much more than that.
I want everything with you, America. I want the holidays and the birthdays, the busy season and lazy weekends. I want peanut butter fingertips on my desk. I want inside jokes and fights and everything. I want a life with you.
I’ll love you until my very last breath. Every beat of my heart is yours. I don’t want to die without you knowing that.
Mistakes mean it’s real.
She couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. In her hands was a sign that said RED-HEADS RULE! with a little crown painted in the corner and tiny stars everywhere. I knew I was the only redhead in the competition, and I noticed that her hair and mine were very nearly the same shade.
America, you are full of nothing but bad ideas. Great intentions but awful ideas.
But you should know the love can wear away under the stress of being married. Someone you think you love now, you might start to hate when he couldn’t take care of your children, it’d be even worse. Love doesn’t always survive under those circumstances.
Fine,” I said. “But I’m telling you, this won’t work.” With an impish grin on his face, he came very close and gave me a long, slow kiss. “And I’m telling you it will.
I knew that, in my whole life, if I married Aspen or someone else, no one would ever make me feel this way. It wasn’t like I made his world better. It was like I was his world. It wasn’t some explosion; it wasn’t fireworks. It was a fire, burning slowly from the inside out.
One can never help being born into perfection.
When you love someone, you sacrifice.
It’s hard to know everything about people close to you, even the people you love the most.
Opinions change. Don’t let that one moment bring you down too much.
You’re worth it. I don’t think you get that. You’re worth it to me.
You made me proud, America. Sometimes I’m surprised at the things you say, but I don’t know why. You were always stronger than you knew.
Mary took hold of the zipper. “Suck it in, miss.” I obeyed, and as the dress cinched me in again, I thought of a soldier going to war. Different armor but the same idea. Tonight I was taking down a man.
When has anything in either of our lives ever been fair?
Where I used to image you as a girl with a bag full of stones, ready to throw them at any foe who crossed her path, you have become the stone itself. You are steady and able.
One of the things that I’ve learned from the Selection so far is that moving forward means joining your life before coming to the palace with the future that lies in front of you. I’m hoping to make another step in joining those two worlds today.