But I didn’t have to pretend anymore, because the girl I’d seen when I closed my eyes was standing in front of me. “Josie?” I lowered my face until it was level with hers – until I could feel the warmth of her breath on my lips.
People like you, my tainted, deliciously flawed Rowen, are not and never will be anything close to golden.” Nope.
Jesse was the guy a girl didn’t get over. End of story. Truest story ever told. I.
Professor Landry was a prime example of someone who marched to the beat of her own drum, as evidenced by her policy that no one precede her name with Professor. She firmly believed that titles had been created to distinguish the upper class from the lower class, and she wanted no part in perpetuating socio-economic stereotypes. So she either went by Landry, Neve, or Hey, you. She didn’t really care, so long as the word “professor” never echoed off the walls she was within. She.
He kissed me like we’d been lovers in hundreds of lifetimes before this one, like he wouldn’t rest until he found me in a hundred more lifetimes in the future. He kissed me like I was everything he needed, and I was clinging to the hope that I was.
You’ve always got a choice. You have a choice now, and you certainly had a choice then. Don’t blame them for the choices you made.
Because I’m nervous and I eat when I’m nervous,” he said, looking at me from the side.
Caring for someone is scary, because you both know how it feels to lose someone in the span of a heartbeat. But you can’t let fear dictate your life or else you’ll end up like me. Don’t live life hiding behind your past. Live for the moment. When you find someone you want to spend forever with, you don’t let them go, whether forever turns out to be a day or a year or fifty years.
You’re the only woman I’ve ever been with. My first. My last.” He kissed the canyon at the base of my neck. “My only.
You’re the only woman for me. I’ve known that my whole life. And I’m not the kind of guy who’s content to pretend with another. It was you or no one. You’re the only woman I’ve been with. I’m the only man you have.
Don’t hurt me, Rowen,” he whispered in a way that tugged at any and every feeling I had for Jesse. I.
Don’t project his mistakes from the past onto him now. Don’t let past choices define present actions.
I love you too much to lose you over something so little.
What once was broken can be fixed.” Boone lifted the angel with the number eighteen at her feet. I could still see every crack from the break, but she was fixed. “It’ll always bear the scars, but at least it’s whole again.
I knew I was one of the lucky ones, my would-be rapist never finished what he’d started, but my ending was still devastating.
I don’t know.” “I don’t know either. That’s the problem.
Rip the bandage off had been the theme of my visit so far – and the theme of much of my life down here.
We don’t deserve anything, Rowen. We don’t deserve punishment, we don’t deserve happiness, life owes us nothing. Realize that.
Because you can’t write a great love story without a tragedy to overcome. Because that’s when love’s proved. Not when life’s easy, but when it’s so damn hard you can barely breathe.
We grieve for our old lives, when we could see friends face to face without worrying one of us might bring death to the other.
May our actions be salve to the broken and freedom to the bound.