Nicole Field’s Reviews > The Lost > Status Update

“Not knowing someone is no reason not to help.” He patted her back, then hugged her close. “It doesn’t kill anyone to put out a little kindness without expecting anything in return.”

How many women gave up everything in their lives, everything in their souls, for the lives of their children? How many women kept the peace with men they hated so their children would want for nothing?
And what was the point?

“Girls learn little acts of rebellion because we’re never allowed the grand acts of rebellion that make boys the heroes and rogues of their golden youth.”

“It’s all right not to know what you want, little mouse. Some of the most interesting lives are led while trying to figure out just that.”

“Hardships happen. To everyone. What matters is what you decide to do afterward.”

“Maybe being weak means we make some bad decisions,” she continued. “Or that we’re selfish. Or…a lot of things that make us less than perfect, really. But I’ve lived perfect before, Hart.”

They sat together for some time, smoking, neither touching their drinks, in a silence that felt like the sort of odd communion that only smokers could understand. That quiet where you didn’t need to talk; where you could just be, as long as smoke wreathed your head in an angel’s halo.

She’d thought seeing him brought low by pain, bedridden and helpless, would make him seem weaker—but instead he exuded a silent and caged tension, deep and violently virile, a promise that this agony could only test him so much before he went berserk and no pain could stop him from becoming the dangerously powerful beast he was.

Jacob with his perfect manners and perfect hair and perfect country-club sweater vests, treating her like a lady but never like a person.