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326 pages, Paperback
Published May 26, 2016

“I can’t, not right now. It’s so much, and I’m not ready for you.”
I felt him press a kiss to the top of my head. “I’ll be waiting when you are.”
“Ready?” he asked against the shell of my ear.
Every time he asked that, he made me think I wasn’t ready. No, definitely not ready for the havoc Jude would wreak upon my heart.
But I nodded, and his arms slid down until we were holding hands. And as we began our descent, all I could think about was how he didn’t let go of me. Not once. He held my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Jude was a holder. And I’d never realized until that moment how badly I’d needed to be held.
“Tell me something, Jude.”
“What?”
“Anything.” Just help me not feel so alone.
“Do you know why I love the mountains so much?”
“No.”
“Life is temporary. The world is not.”
[...]
“I climb mountains so that I can see the world. The world doesn’t care what I’ve done.”
“What if the truth is dirty?” I followed it with a nervous swallow, watched as his gaze shifted for a second to my throat before meeting my eyes again.
“Then I appreciate it even more. Let me be stained with truth. I’ll take a dirty truth over a pretty lie any day.”
“My whole body is a story, and each mark upon it is a page. Sometimes things happen in a story that you don’t want—or don’t expect—because you don’t choose it. And then, some things happen because you’ve chosen them—wanted them. My scars are things I didn’t choose. My tattoos are things I’ve chosen. And all of it is me, my story. It’s the story that sits in my throat, begging to be told. And when you’re too private to tell the story, you wear it instead.”
“Life’s too God damn short to be living so sad.” His voice had taken on an edge of impatience and he coughed again into his hand. “Live for tomorrow.”
“Sometimes, there is no tomorrow.” I thought of Ellie, how I’d prayed to wake up from what I assumed was a nightmare. For the tomorrow to carry me from the nightmare.
“Which is why you should live for it.
“You’re not Trista the sad; you’re Trista the unknown.”
I’d had this feeling about Jude, like he could upend my life without really trying to. That I could fall in love with him without meaning to.
“You’re hungry—you’re starving. And I wish you didn’t make me want to feed you.”