Addison Quotes

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.

I was just telling Claire about a guy I met in bread class. I hate him, but he could be my soul mate.

Sometimes its necessary to embrace the magic, to find out what's real in life, and in one's own heart.

Oh, please. Everyone in this town always says that, like you have to be born here to understand things. I understand plenty. You're only as weird as you want to be.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

The Waverley sisters hadn't been close as children, but they were as thick as thieves now, the way adult siblings often are, the moment they realize that family is actually a choice.

Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.

She finally understood that, no matter how hard you try, you can't make someone love you. You can't stop them from making the wrong decision. There's no magic for that.

Was it really that simple? Choosing a life? ... Maybe you don't fall in love. Maybe you jump. Maybe, just maybe, it's all a choice. (Josh Matteson)

The apple tree in the background, just barely visible, was stretching a single limb out to her, as if wanting to be in the photo with her.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.

Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.

I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.

Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.

Some of Bay's fondest memories were of lying under the apple tree in the summer while Claire gardened and the apple tree tossed apples at her like a dog trying to coax its owner into playing catch.

Play hard to get. You should be.

First frost meant letting go, so it was always reason to celebrate.

You are who you are, whether you like it or not, so why not like it?

She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.

Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.

On the day the tree bloomed in the fall, when its white apple blossoms fell and covered the ground like snow, it was tradition for the Waverleys to gather in the garden like survivors of some great catastrophe, hugging one another, laughing as they touched faces and arms, making sure they were all okay, grateful to have gotten through it.

Men of thoughtless actions are always surprised by consequences.

I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.

My favorite quote for First Frost is, They give their hearts away too easily and get distracted by silver-eyed strangers.

It took me a long time to realize this: We get to choose what defines us.

Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.

People always say life is too short for regrets. But the truth is, it's too long.

It had taken her a long time to realize that a prison sometimes isn't a prison at all. Sometimes, it's simply a door you assume is locked because you've never tried to open it.

She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi, and she always smelled faintly of cottonwood and peaches.

She accepted it from then on. Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.

When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over.

So I told him his bread was ugly, and he called me a dough diva. A dough diva. Of all the nerve! We're going out on Saturday.

Something was about to happen.

My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories.

Girls like us, when we love, it takes everything we have.

The neighborhood homeowners always knew when she ran by, because they suddenly felt the desire to organize their sock drawers and finally replace those burned out light-bulbs they'd been meaning to.

Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss.

Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.

I Have Not Yet Begun to Procrastinate" which was the quote on Bay's shirt from "First Frost

What is grander than a country and more valuable than gold? Strength of heart.

The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy.

They give their hearts too easily.

It is noble to love another without caring to know who gave them breath.

I'm homesick all the time," she said, still not looking at him "I just don't know where home is. There's this promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it's like chasing the moon - just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon. I grieve and try to move on, but then the damn thing comes back the next night, giving me hope of catching it all over again.

I spent so much time telling myself that this wasn't home that I started to believe it,” she said carefully. “Belonging has always been tough for me.” “I can be your home,” he said quietly. “Belong to me.

We're connected, as women. It's like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there's trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we're just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don't help each other, who will?

Her grandmother used to tell her that a pink sky meant someone in the distance had just fallen in love . . . .

It was like the way you wanted sunshine on Saturdays, or pancakes for breakfast. They just made you feel good.

It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me.

Living down your own past was hard enough. You shouldn't have to live down someone else's.

And everyone still swore the rose candies made them think of their first loves.

How we see the world changes all the time. It all depends on our mood.

It feels like he's taken your heart, doesn't it?....Like he's reached in and pulled it out from you. And I bet he smiles like he doesn't know, like he doesn't know he's holding your heart in his hand and you're dying from him.

You were given your gift for the joy you may give in return.

When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over. It was almost too bright to watch.

People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted.

Safe is just another word for scared.

Don't you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?

After you finish a book, the story still goes on in your mind. You can never change the beginning. But you can always change the end.

A breeze flew through, picking up some leaves and swirling them around, the sound like fluttering pages in a quiet library.

She couldn't change who she was, and she no longer wanted to, even if she could. She knew that who you are is a stone set deep inside you. You can spend all your life trying to dig that stone out, or you can build around it. Your choice.

Life is about experience... You can't hold on to everything

He was the only person in the world she was tongue-tied around, and yet the only person she really wanted to talk to.

Thanks for choosing me, Addison.

She understood that the hardest times in life to go through were when you were transitioning from one version of yourself to another.

'In our inmost and secret heart, which you ask us to bare to you, we wish to banish them as we were banished, to a cold and lonely house, in the charge of a man who hated us. And we wish them trapped there as we were trapped.' 'You consider that unjust, Serenity?' 'We consider it cruel,' Maia said. 'And we do not think that cruelty is ever just.'

I have not yet begun to procrastinate.

People fall in love all the time. And it's not always with the right people. And it's not always reciprocated.

When your cup is empty, you do not mourn what is gone. Because if you do, you will miss the opportunity to fill it again.

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.

She'd wanted the attention, she'd wanted more people to know her gift, as if the more people who knew, the more real it would be.

Being left makes you doubt your ability to keep people, even friends.

Memories, even hard memories, grew soft like peaches as they grow older.

Motherhood is hard enough without judgement from others who don't know the whole story.

Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map.

That's the fairy tale. You meet, you fall in love, you kiss, and neither of you is revolted by it. You get married and have kids and live happily ever after.

Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too.

When you're a teenager, your friends are your life. When you grow up, friendships seem to get pushed further and further back, until it seems like a luxury, a frivolity, like a bubble bath.

If a man has so much heat he burns your skin when he touches you, he's the devil. Run away

Only two years dead, and it was getting harder for me to feel…anything. I was starting to slip into the darkness. The numbness. And the worst part is that it wasn’t even scary. I was losing myself, and I didn’t even care. Then I met you, and at first I didn’t understand what had happened. What had changed. All I knew was that I wanted to be near you. Then you helped me with Addison, even though it nearly got you killed—I nearly got you killed—and I started to understand how special you are. But by then, you were getting serious with Nash. With my brother—one of few people in the whole world I still gave a damn about. So I tried to stay away. I tried so hard.” His voice cracked on the last word, and my heart cracked with it. Tears stood in my eyes, but I was afraid to let them fall. I was afraid to even breathe for fear of missing a single word. "But you kept pulling me back. You’re the brightest thing I’ve ever seen, Kaylee. You’re this beautiful ball of fire spitting sparks out at the world, burning fiercely, holding back the dark by sheer will. And I always knew that if I reached out—if I tried to touch you—I’d get burned. Because you’re not mine. I’m not supposed to feel the fire. I’m not supposed to want it. But I do. I want you, Kaylee, like I’ve never wanted anything. Ever. I want the fire. I want the heat, and the light, and I want the burn.

She never thought she was good at making friends. But maybe she was just trying to be friends with the wrong people.

To this day she could make tap water boil just by kissing him.

I'll teach you how to come with a man inside you. Not a boy, Addison, a man.

Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves.

We have history, you and I. You just don’t know it yet.

The words were strung in the air like garland. She could almost see them.

When you have to do something, you have to do it. Putting it off only makes it worse. Believe me, I know.

When you know something’s wrong, but you don’t know exactly what it is, the air around you changes.

Everything was quiet, a strange sort of quiet that felt like an unfinished sentence.

There are birds, and then there are other birds. Maybe they don’t sing. Maybe they don’t fly. Maybe they don’t fit in. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be an other bird rather than just the same old thing.

He might be tall enough to see into tomorrow, but he hadn’t looked there in a long, long time. He’d forgotten how bright it was. So bright he could hardly stand it.

Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.

Anyone ever teach you to run away from danger ” “Don’t be stupid Ellis.” I open the door. “That’s where all the fun is.

She'd always known he didn't love her. But it was easier to bear when he didn't know she loved him. That way they were even. Now he knew he had all the power.

If anyone had been paying attention to the signs, they would have realized that air turns white when things are about to change, that paper cuts mean there's more to what's written on the page than meets the eye, and that birds are always out to protect you from things you don't see.

To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story.

When people believe you have something to give, something no one else has, they'll go to great lengths and pay a lot of money for it.

You can't change where you came from, but you can change where you go from here.

they give their hearts away

Traffickers will stop when men stop buying women

Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails.

If the people around you don’t love or accept you just as you are, find new people. They’re out there.

Sometimes people who had been together for a long time got to imagining that things used to be better, even when they weren't.

She sometimes thought she was going crazy. Her first thought when she woke up was always how to get him out of her thoughts. And she would keep watch, hoping to see him next door, while plotting ways to never have to see him again.

The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn

You'd be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you'd do, when you take self-respect out of the equation.

If we measured life in the things that almost happened, we wouldn’t get anywhere.

I lost myself trying to find happiness in things that didn't love me back.

She wished she had known back then. Known that happiness isn't a point in time you leave behind. It's what's ahead of you. Every single day.

That, they knew, was true friendship. And they knew, if you're lucky enough to find it, you hold on to it.

Stories aren’t fiction. Stories are fabric. They’re the white sheets we drape over our ghosts so we can see them. —ROSCOE AVANGER, Sweet Mallow

How can we know the true meaning of charity if we don't even know how to help those closest to us?

Stability was overrated. Crises and adventures, on the other hand, could actually teach you something.

She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi.

Yes, but one cannot prevent change simply by wishing it not to happen,

Some of the best people i know are fools', Evanelle said. 'The strongest people I know.

We all want to think we’re worth the trouble.

No one should ever compromise the dignity of another human being.

Misfits need a place to get away, too. All that trying to fit in is exhausting.

It was lemon verbena day, so the house was filled with a sweet-tart scent that conjured images of picnic blankets and white clouds shaped like true-love hearts.

Those who decided to stick with her would be her true friends. The others would just be scenery.

How could someone with a life this full feel this empty?

Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse.

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.

Men. You can't live with them, you can't shoot them.

Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.

Sometimes duplicity and treason are markers of the enemy, and sometimes, the failed intention of a masterful ally. But, nevertheless, as they burden you with a vexing brand of love, they become nothing more than the kiss of Judas, pressing a crown of thorns into your flesh.

Love always hurts. That’s one thing I know you know. But it’s worth it. That’s what you don’t know. Yet.

Gage opens the door. I’m not sure whether he gets out or Logan yanks him into the street, but a fight erupts. Full throttle kicks to the balls

Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.

Some men you know are Southern before they ever say a word," Julia said as she and Emily watched Sawyer's progress, helpless, almost as if they couldn't look away. "They remind you of something good--picnics or carrying sparklers around at night. Southern men will hold doors open for you, they'll hold you after you yell at them, and they'll hold on to their pride no matter what. Be careful what they tell you, though. They have a way of making you believe anything, because they say it that way.

Should the whole frame of nature round him break, In ruin and confusion hurled, He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack, And stand secure amidst a falling world.

Right now everyone is drinking bad wine made of sour grapes and hysteria. Let them drink it, and let them regret it in the morning.

But one thing she [Rachel] did believe in was love. She believed that you could smell it, that you could taste it, that it could change the entire course of your life.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.

Watching them, she realized they made so much sense together. Every look, every touch, was a reassurance, almost electric, as if they were shocking each other with every contact.

She'd fallen into the best part of her past.

Claire Waverley has started a successful new venture, Waverley’s Candies. Though her handcrafted confections—rose to recall lost love, lavender to promote happiness and lemon verbena to soothe throats and minds—are singularly effective, the business of selling them is costing her the everyday joys of her family, and her belief in her own precious gifts.

She would read a book hundreds of times, carrying it with her until the pages were torn and the covers were falling off, then she'd paste the covers to the ceiling where she could stare at them, like remembering a good dream.

You're on a road show with your penis, and trust me, I'm the last person who wants to get in your way. But I'm telling you, operation occupy-my-vagina is a no-go for the evening.

Not every man was sorry when he hurt a woman.

But surprises were nothing new to her. Like opening a can of mushroom soup and finding tomato instead; be grateful and eat it anyway.

Revenge in the hands of your enemies is a loaded gun. You can beg them for mercy, wave the white flag of surrender, but the only true elixir for the vitriol they bestow is a measure of hatred dispensed of your own.

No one ever told me that loving someone would feel like you were giving up every last part of yourself, but that's how I feel, Addison. From the second I saw you, I was done. I gave it all to you. Something about you called to me, and I have never regretted you, even as I questioned us.

I know the resolution. I know the end of the story before it ever begins. I must choose love. And for this, I will surely die.

In places like this, it's hard to imagine that the world can be so ugly,' Thomas said. 'This is how it was meant to be,' Priya replied. 'The ugliness is our own fault.

Magic is what we invent when we want something we think we can't have.

I should let people in. If they leave, they leave. If I break, I break. It happens to everyone. Right?

The reminder that other lives had tragedies without reference to his own was both salutary and painful.

There was a mood of magic and frenzy to the room. Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails. And then there was the smell-the smell of hope, the kind of smell that brought people home.

Embarrassment felt a lot like eating chili peppers. It burned in the back of your throat and there was nothing you could do to make it go away. You just had to take it, suffer from it, until it eased off.

But relying on one person for your every need is so dangerous. One set of hands isn't enough to keep you from falling.

It had always fascinated him that she'd consumed so many words, that her head was full of stories, told a thousand different ways.

Your peers when you're a teenager will always be the keepers of your embarrassment and regret. It was one of life's great injustices, that you can move on and be accomplished and happy, but the moment you see someone from high school you immediately become the person you were then, not the person you are now.

Children always know when their mothers are crazy - they just never admit it, not out loud, to anyone.

Always make your needs and expectations known,she used to say. That way no one gets hurt.

He didn't think he belonged here, so she was making him face some uncomfortable facts. People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

To think, after all this time, after all the searching and all the waiting, after all the regret and the time she'd spent away, she came back to find that happiness was right where she's left it. On a football field in Mullaby, North Carolina. Waiting for her.

Eby knew all too well that there was a fine line when it came to grief. If you ignore it, it goes away, but then it always comes back when you least expect it. If you let it stay, if you make a place for it in your life, it gets too comfortable and it never leaves. It was best to treat grief like a guest. You acknowledge it, you cater to it, then you send it on its way.

Wa, did I just say fate? I so don't believe in that. Fate is bullshit people force-feed themselves when they're too lazy to carve out a destiny of their own.

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in proper figures.

Her life was monotonous, but it kept her out of trouble. . . . This, her father would say, was called being an adult.

When someone needs help, you help. Right?

It was like she was MADE of cake, light and pretty and decorated on the outside-with her sweet laugh and pink streak to her hair-but it was anyone's guess what was on the inside.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

The area was encompassed in a bubble of warm, fragrant steam from the funnel cake deep fryers. It smelled like sweet vanilla cake batter you licked off a spoon.

Southern men will hold doors open for you, they'll hold you after you yell at them, and they'll hold on to their pride no matter what. Be careful what they tell you, though. They have a way of making you believe anything, because they say it that way.

He remembered the moment when his thoughts had inverted themselves—that shift from not being able to please everyone to not trying—and the way that change had enabled him to see past the maneuverings and histrionics of the representatives to the deeper structures of the problem; it was the same with the Corazhas.

She knew what it felt like to stand in front of someone and ask them to love you, to try to pull them to you by the sheer force of your desire, a force so strong it felt as though you were going to die from it.

...she was still water in his hands. He didn't know how to hold on.

Evil prevails where good people do nothing.

Not everything has to be real to be true.

Better to build new bridges, he thought, than to pine after what’s been washed away.

You are very decisive in your indecision.

Summer was a lady who didn't give up her spotlight easily.

He used to believe good things happened in this kind of weather.

Children, don't hold on to old love so hard you forget to live. Old love isn't the only love you'll ever have. And I can tell you from this side that it never really goes away, anyway. So let go. Whatever you're holding on to, let go.

The world was not like him and was not going to change for him. The trick to getting through life, she'd told him, is not to resent it when it isn't exactly how you think it should be.

The men gasped at Nicholas. "That's the most I've heard him say in three years." Sam said. He turned to the others. "You ever hear him talk that much?" "I wasn't sure he could talk," Tucker Addison replied straight-faced. "He talks," Dahlia said defensively. "Begging your pardon, ma'am, but he's just plain anti-social," Sam pointed out, "Always had been, always will be.

There was a strange but universal understanding among women. On some level all women knew, they all understood, the fear of being outnumbered, of being helpless. It throbbed in their chests when they thought about the times they left stores and were followed. The knocks on their car windows as they were sitting alone at red lights, and strangers asking for rides. Having too much to drink and losing their ability to be forceful enough to just say no. Smiling at strange men coming on to them, not wanting to hurt their feelings, not wanting to make a scene. All women remembered these things, even if they had never happened to them personally. It was a part of their collective unconscious.

I love thee still.

They say time heals all wounds. They lied.

Study the stars.—M.

Falling in love is a lot like death. It chooses you. It decides the moment and the chain of events that will preclude the precise intersection of life in which it occurs. It uses you—treats you as though you were malleable in its warm pliable hands. It doesn’t bother to ask if you want it, or need it, just fills the gaping hole of destiny’s design

When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief.

There was, in fact, a street sign to that effect—the first I’d seen in all of Devil’s Acre. Louche Lane, it read in fancy handwritten script. Piracy discouraged. “Discouraged?” I said. “Then what’s murder? Frowned upon?” “I believe murder is ‘tolerated with reservations.’ ” “Is anything illegal here?” Addison asked. “Library late fines are stiff. Ten lashes a day, and that’s just for paperbacks.” “There’s a library?” “Two. Though one won’t lend because all the books are bound in human skin and quite valuable.

Mark my words, you will rue this day, lament it in tears. You will come to me on your knees sobbing, begging for forgiveness. But I will tell you now and I will tell you then, you are on your own, Skyla.

True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, in the enjoyment of one's self, and, in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina. She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm.

One thing Billy knew that most people don't know is that the longer you have a wish, the closer you get to it becoming true. Most people never get what they want because they change what they want, change it into something more practical or reachable. ...Billy felt sorry for the other people who gave up their wishes so easily.

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together

Just So You Know You fall in love with every book you touch. You never break the spine or tear the pages. That would be cruel. You have secret favorites but, when asked, you say that you could never choose. But did you know that books fall in love with you, too? They watch you from the shelf while you sleep. Are you dreaming of them, they wonder, in that wistful mood books are prone to at night when they’re bored and there’s nothing else to do but tease the cat. Remember that pale yellow book you read when you were sixteen? It changed your world, that book. It changed your dreams. You carried it around until it was old and thin and sparkles no longer rose from the pages and filled the air when you opened it, like it did when it was new. You should know that it still thinks of you. It would like to get together sometime, maybe over coffee next month, so you can see how much you’ve both changed. And the book about the donkey your father read to you every night when you were three, it’s still around – older, a little worse for wear. But it still remembers the way your laughter made its pages tremble with joy. Then there was that book, just last week, in the bookstore. It caught your eye. You looked away quickly, but it was too late. You felt the rush. You picked it up and stroked your hand over its glassy cover. It knew you were The One. But, for whatever reason, you put it back and walked away. Maybe you were trying to be practical. Maybe you thought there wasn’t room enough, time enough, energy enough. But you’re thinking about it now, aren’t you? You fall in love so easily. But just so you know, they do, too.

Suddenly gator was framed in the doorway, grinning at them, his black unruly hair tumbling into his face and his piercing blue eyes bright with laughter. "Oh, I see you are most friendly with each other. And Lily was so worried." He turned his head. "Ian Tucker, come look at this. Our man has found himself a little kitty cat." "Shut up, Gator, or I'm going to shoot you." Nicholas put the gun away and looked down at dahlia. She had the covers pulled up to her chin. Here eyes were enormous and getting bigger by the moment as more Ghost Walkers crowded into the doorway to gape at the sight of Nicholas, the loner, in bed with Dahlia. "And you said he didn't know what to do with a woman," Tucker Addison accused the tallest of the group, Ian McGillicuddy. "I stand corrected." Ian gave Nicholas a small salute. Dahlia made a small distressed squeak. Nicholas picked up the gun. "I'm going to start shooting if the lot of you don't get out and close the door." "What a poor sport," Gator groused. "And this is my house.

The path of destiny pulls you forward. It exhumes you from a state of being and propels you towards the juncture you were created for. A new frontier that you are forced to tread with a cross on your back, heavy as a boulder. When you fall to your knees at the hands of your betrayer, you can only hope to find the one sent to carry your burden -- shoulder the journey towards your final punishment. Sometimes duplicity and treason are markers of the enemy, and sometimes the failed intention of a masterful ally.

Suffering is the nature of this world. It is the golden standard by which all things are measured. It is not happiness that sets the bar, but agony. Even happiness cannot be fully recognized without the right measure of misery to contrast its borders. Suffering magnifies hunger-exhaustion-prods you to move when prosperity is just a dream out of reach. It is the mortal twin of eternal hope. How you respond to its touch molds you, shapes your future as it rains down oppression like fire over your shoulders. Deception. It laid over my world like a bruise. Covered it so completely I bought the lie that the shadow offered and found comfort nestled in its thorny arms. I walked the trail it dusted with breadcrumb, walked in the slip noose it had skillfully wove and dove off the cliff without realizing- willingly, with vigor. Heartbreak. There is no bigger void, no darker shade of soot- no ache more unstoppable than that of a broken heart. A heart in pieces can very much kill you-without love’s healing touch, you will surely die. They say time heals all wounds. They lied.