Bianca Scardoni Quotes

“The most dangerous enemy is not the one who lingers behind you in the shadows, but the one who walks beside you as a friend.”

“That was my place. A sleepy little town tucked away in the rangy coast of British Columbia—worlds away from the sunshine state I used to call home.”

“Not that it mattered though. The truth seldom ever did in the face of a juicy lie.”

“There was something strange about hearing that word, like it didn’t belong to me anymore or shouldn’t be coming out of his mouth. Maybe it was because it made me face reality; that these past six months weren’t just some perpetual nightmare I was stuck in; that I wasn’t simply waiting for someone to wake me up and tell me none of it was real and that everything was fine.”

“It was hard to let go of that; to let go of the life I had before, but the truth was, it was harder for me to stay there inside the pain. I wasn’t strong enough to live there no matter how much I wanted to.”

“Sometimes it feels like the more I wish for peace and quiet in my life, the more chaotic my life becomes.”

“Be careful who you trust, for even the Devil was once an Angel.”

“Your silence speaks volumes.”

“One misstep was all it took, and it all came crashing down. And they were right there waiting for it—eager and ready to bury me in the wreckage.”

“I hadn’t even left my room and already my day had taken a U-turn straight to hell.”

“The life I knew and loved was gone, and so was my father. No matter how many words I chose to reject.”

“At most, I could allow myself only a few minutes to cry for him—to grieve our lives, and then I had to push the memories away, burying them deep inside of me once again so that I could function. So that I could go on.”

“There was something about him—about those eyes and that stare—something familiar. It was the kind of something that made everyone else in the room fade away into the dark recess of my mind until there was no one left but me and him. He was the picture. Everything else around him was just white noise.”

“I walked hand in hand with my enemy, allowed their kiss of death to linger on my lips while the world disintegrated around me. I couldn’t see through the smoke and mirrors; too consumed with fighting a destiny I didn’t want; too afraid to let go of a life I wasn’t meant to have.”

“Everything about the house was rich, and dense, and rooted. It was everything I wasn’t. Even the air, with its distinct smell of oak wood and sage, spoke to its identify and its history. I couldn’t help but feel small here. Overwhelmed. Incompatible.”

“I used to cringe when people said I looked like him—my father, because I was a girl and girls aren’t supposed to look like their fathers. Girls are supposed to look like their mothers, or fairy princesses, or Barbie dolls, or some crap like that.”

“A calling implies I have a choice, doesn’t it? That I could answer the call, or not. That I have a choice in whether or not I accept this as my destiny? Well, I don’t. I don’t want anything to do with it. And I don’t accept the call. Matter of fact, this line is no longer in service. ”

“The only thing more dangerous than moving forward was standing still.”

“The butterflies began waltzing in my belly again, this time to the sweet melody of his words. Words that were meant for me.”

“This was what my seventeen years of life had been reduced to: one duffel bag and a hideous valise. How ironic since I used to be the kind of girl who shopped every week-end and worried about what so and so thought about my outfit or if what’s his face noticed me that day.”

“Everyone’s afraid of something, Jemma. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re alive. It takes real courage to feel that fear and do it anyway.”

“It was false hope, and I didn’t want any part of it.”

“I could easily fall in love with the way he was looking at me. Like I was something special; something worth fighting for.”

“It’s like you have all this light inside of you, but you can’t see it. It chases away the darkness in people and draws them in closer to you. It’s one of things I love most about you”

“Whatever,” he said and tipped his head back as he polished off the remnants of whatever it was he was drinking. “It’s not like she’s the only game in town.” He took a step towards me but I was too consumed with my own thoughts to pay it any attention.

“The cruel world slipped away from me, and with it went all the other bad things in my life;”

“The blur of looming evergreens zipped by me so quickly it was as though they were never really there at all. Sometimes I felt just like those trees, rooted in mud with no escape, while my life sat in a car and passed me by.”

“It was nothing like what I’d dreamed of when I was a little girl—what I had hoped for myself growing up. But it was the only life I had, and it was mine. The days of waiting around for someone else to ride in and save the day for me were over.”

“ ‘So you don’t care that she’s just using you? Why don’t you go over there and tell Trace.’ He laughed as though I’d just dropped the punchline to some silly, little kid’s joke.”

“And I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to exist inside that hopelessness. I just wanted to sink into this stolen moment with him and keep our doomed reality at bay.”

“I was done with trying to fit into everyone’s preconceived box of who I was supposed to be.”

“I’m bonded to Dominic.”

“There was something to be said about the quietness of night. About the stillness. Everything was tranquil and unmoving as though the world had come to a temporary stop in its rotation—ceased its constant spiral of madness.”

“The beautiful boy from my dreams turned out to be nothing more than a trickster. An illusion I was too blind to see through.”

“And when we were alone, I…I asked him to kiss—” “Stop. Stop.” His hands came out in front of him. “I’ve heard enough.”

“People couldn’t be trusted. They lied. They cheated. And then, when everything you were and hoped to be shattered apart into a million pieces, they left.”

″ ‘I’m not letting go’. He lowered his head to mine, bringing our faces within a dangerous whisper. ‘Come home with me.’ ”

″ ‘Come on, Blackburn. I’m not as dumb as I look.’ He took another sip of his drink and focused back in on Nikki and Trace. ‘One minute I’m getting you a drink at Spring Fling and the next you’re on the dance-floor with Trace. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out why you both disappeared.’ ”

“I don’t like him,” I said, watching Trace as he leaned into Nikki and whispered something in her ear. My heart sank all the way down to my feet. “Not anymore anyway.”

“The steep descent into Hell is always paved with good intentions.”

“I could live inside my books, each one taking me further and further away from the barred windows that held me prisoner.”

“So much of who I was had become lost, diluted, fragmented. I was being pulled and stretched in every which way, dragged in a million directions with the expectations of the world sitting heavy on my center like a concrete paperweight I couldn’t shake off.”

“I shook my head, still staring forward at the real-life nightmare unfolding before me. I felt Caleb’s eyes on me, assessing me as I watched them. ‘You really like him, don’t you?’ It came out like an afterthought; a passing observation that had just occurred to him.”

“I was going to live my life my way, however short-lived it may be, and I wasn’t asking for permission anymore.”

“It quickly became my way out; my escape from captivity. I didn’t have to live inside my pain anymore.”

“He was ineffably perfect just the way he was, an enigma filled with both fire and ice that could send my heart into freefall with a simple shift of his eyes.”

″‘Let me go,’ I demanded, though it lacked punch. Being this close to Trace was no good for me, and I knew that, but the room was definitely spinning now and I wasn’t even sure I could stand upright anymore.

“It only took me two flat seconds to spot them. Trace and Nikki Together again.”

“My stomach bottomed out as I watched them from the doorway. He was leaning back against the wall, wearing jeans and a fitted white t-shirt that hugged him in all the right places, while Nikki was tipping into him, wolfing up all his personal space with her runway-ready body. She was all dolled up with a skin-tight pink dress and a pair of matching heels that looked like they belonged on a stage. And not the theater kind.”

“I could handle the truth. I would listen to its heartbreaks and I would mourn the world as I knew it because that’s the kind of girl I was, and then I would pick my pretty self off the floor and do what I was supposed to do. Just like I always did.”

“But there was no end in sight. No peace to be found. The end was only the beginning.”

“There was nothing innocent about that man, and every one in the room knew it.”

“The end came at me jagged and skewed like puzzle pieces to a game I didn’t know I was playing.”

“There was a distinct method to the madness, every move propagated to force my hand, to lure me out of hiding with the sweet promise of finality.”

“I took solace in knowing that something better waited for me on the other side, something as pure and deep as the ocean itself.”

“I imagined the waiting was just part of their game. A way to break me down before the real torture began.”

“The suffocating darkness had already descended on me and was infesting every inch of my soul as I feared never seeing him again. Nothing they could do to me would be worse than that, worse than the crippling ache that was already in my heart, killing me from the inside out.”

“Say it again, angel. I beg of you.”

“Dumbfounded, I stared at him like an apparition from a past life. He wasn’t supposed to be here, couldn’t be, and yet he was. The wind howled around me, ruffling my hair as it hissed its warnings to tread ever so carefully.”

“Welcome to your final resting place, I thought to myself dryly and then slammed my lids shut to chase away the terrifying thought.”

“In my dreams, I was always free. I was happy, and I was with him. (...) It was always heaven like this with Trace. My own piece of paradise within the burning inferno.”

“I wasn’t the same scared little girl he met that night in the church, and I was going to make sure that he knew it.”

“It was no secret that I should have been dead on more than one occasion. There had to be a reason why I wasn’t. And I prayed it was a good reason. I needed it to be a good reason.”

“People always say that everything happens for a reason. That one door closes so that another one can open, and that in the end, everything will always work itself out, and if it hasn’t, it simply isn’t the end.”

“There is no road so long and winding as the one that lead you to the finish line. Every bend is meant to test you, every junction made to bring you closer to that place where love and sacrifice meet.”

“The death of my childhood naivety had come to pass. I trusted no one and I feared nothing, not even death itself, for everything I loved in this world had already been taken away from me. Ripped from my heart like a bandage. There was nothing left inside but darkness... darkness breeding darkness, and I was at one with it now.”

“I know that my life will only ever be a battle against the darkness - a darkness that is infinite and eternal in its very nature - and it will remain that way until the inevitable day when the darkness takes my last breath.”

“Hell on earth had come, and Trace was really gone.”

“The pain of it slashed through my body in nauseating waves before settling heavily in the pit of my belly. I tried to hold it together, to hold it down, but I couldn’t.”

“As hard as it was for me to digest the very concept of a family, the notion of it still tugged on something inside of me, because deep down in the gallows of my truth, I still longed for exactly that. Family. Love.”

“The truth was I craved our exchanges and I calmed in his mere presence, and there wasn’t anything I could do to change that. Dominic and I were blood bonded - looming apocalypse or not.”

“What I needed was a way to undo this mess and get Trace back. Better yet, I needed someone to tell me none of this was happening. That it was all just some twisted nightmare I’d dreamed up from years of watching too many horror movies. And most of all, I needed Dominic to stop staring at me that way.”

“He could make me feel better and, for a second, I seriously contemplated it. But I knew that taking the easy way out - escaping into Dominic and leaving this unbearable pain and darkness behind me - was only a temporary fix.”

“His words replayed in my mind like the music score to Shakespearean tragedy. I decided I wasn’t going to focus on the big, fat it. I was going to dig through the smothering darkness and hold onto that tiny fragment of light.”

“I know what you’re trying to do, but it doesn’t matter to me one bit, because I’m not giving up on him until there isn’t an ounce of hope left.”

“You’re letting your emotions cloud your judgement, and it’s going to get you killed.”

“This was exactly the reason I needed space from him. I couldn’t think straight when he was this close, nor did I have the energy to keep pushing him away, especially when his proximity was the only thing that quelled the growing volcano inside of me.”

“It was the kind of separation anxiety that made my skin crawl and my head pound from the inside out. I immediately tried to shake it away, forcing myself to stay focused on what was most important.”

″ ‘Well, what would you have me do instead, Gabriel? The more I give in to him, the more I want him.’ My confession appeared to surprise him, but not as much as it surprised me.”

″ ‘I never let the truth break me before, and I’m not about to start now.’ As awful as it was, as difficult to swallow as it might be, knowing was always better than not knowing.”