Kate

“Aching for them, I wondered who had made Skye so desperate to be the center of someone's world that she couldn't even love her own children, for fear they wouldn't love her back enough.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Final Gambit

“What if he hates me?"

"No one could possibly hate you, Xander," I told him, my heart twisting.

"Avery, people have hated me my whole life." There was something in his tone that made me think that very few people understood what it was like to be Xander Hawthorne.

"Not anyone who knows you," I said fiercely.

Xander smiled, and something about it made me want to cry. "Do you think it's okay," he said, sounding younger than I'd ever heard him, "that I loved playing those Saturday morning games? Loved growing up here? Loved the great and terrible Tobias Hawthorne?”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Final Gambit

“hate to break it to you, Charlotte, but having a single relationship with your middle-school sweetheart doesn’t make you an expert.” I feel angry and off balance suddenly, wishing I could have this conversation with someone who’s not simultaneously judging me and belittling me, and frustration turns my words sharp. “It actually makes you kind of sheltered. So maybe don’t try to give advice when you’re incapable of making a move without Shane.”
― Karen M. McManus, Nothing More to Tell

“Ready." Libby looked down at the water balloons she held in each hand–and at her twin tattoos: SURVIVOR on one wrist, and on the other ... TRUST.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Final Gambit