Invidious Quotes

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.’ ”

“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.”

″‘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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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