One thing I've always wondered—why did you enter that bikini contest when you were a teenager?” Her face flushed with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. “How far back did you trace me?” “Far enough.” A pause. “You didn't answer my qu...
She feels him scoot closer, the heat of him radiating off his chest and absorbing into her skin. His legs straddle her from behind, and he places delicate kisses along her shoulder, her back, the very center of her spine. Each time is like an electri...
Even if we try to conform to ideals and strive for perfection, we will always be pulled back to our core identity because it’s the path of least resistance for our souls – an energy force that wants nothing more than for us to honor and accept wh...
The four men were in the kitchen laughing over breakfast when the door slammed open with such force that it knocked a picture off the wall. In unison, they jumped to their feet, not knowing what had hit them. “What?! It wasn’t enough for you to s...
My God, Sage. Your eyes. How have I never noticed them?" That uncomfortable feeling was spreading over me again. "What about them?" "The color," he breathed. "When you stand in the light. They're amazing... like molten gold. I could paint those..." H...
But I loved the library simply because it was a library. I love libraries. I like reading, but I love libraries. Being surrounded by books makes me feel safe, the way some people need trees or mountains around them to feel secure. Not me – nature�...
Great. Now Renata would have even more reason to dislike her. Jane would have an enemy. The last time she had had anything close to an enemy, she was in primary school herself. It had never crossed her mind that sending your child to school would be ...
For what its worth, you're good for him," he said. Healther looked up at him, surprised. Von's green gaze held hers. "Family," he said. "It all comes down to who has your back when your tires are running down a strange road & who'll stop to help you ...
She looks like an empty shell of a woman with her soul hovering above her. We believe in spiritual guías in Santo Domingo. Hers is her own self. I can see Mami’s soul desperately trying to find its way back into her small body.
Have you ever felt happy and miserable at the same time?” I sighed. “Yes.” Hutch sat up. He threw the covers back and got out of bed. He opened up the blinds sending rays of bright sunlight into his room. “But I got over it. I figured out no ...
Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She'd believed in it once too, back when she was eighteen. But she knew that love was messy, just like life. It took turns that people couldn't foresee or even understand, leaving a long trai...
They’d welcomed him aboard their ship. Nico had never allowed himself the luxury of friends, but the crew of the Argo II was as close as he’d ever come. The idea of any of them dying made him feel empty – like he was back in the giants’ bronz...
She wondered If I had woken up, would I have smelled his sadness, his desperation, and his detachment? His death, her breath. He told her once, she remembers, these two words have no other rhyme but each other. If she could go back, she thinks -- She...
The hardware man had measured out the nails, offered his condolences, and then asked Bright if he'd considered signing up to go to the war...With his mother dead, there was nothing really to stay for. Bright had signed his name, listened wordlessly t...
Petra turned to her. "Everybody lies about who they are. Name one person here who isn't doing that and I will drop out right now!" Shanti felt that snake of truth coil around her legs, threatening to squeeze. "I didn't mean..." "No one ever does." Pe...
Intense sunlight rained down on a half-submerged city. Waves crashed between buildings that stood like waterlogged tombstones. Skyscrapers of smashed glass and twisted rusting metal jutted from the churning swell as islands of broken dreams. A famili...
I remember my brother as such a gentle and loving child, the best big brother a girl could hope for, but I remember when I started to sense our family's world tilting on its axis, the kaleidoscope turning, when things started to go wrong. From then o...
She has gone back to Brooklyn,' her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmire Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years already when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come...
For anyone who feels lost in their own way, going back to who you are and what you love or moving forward to whoever you are meant to be or meant to love, is the purpose of being lost. We lose ourselves, so we can find out who we truly are. And when ...
It was your body....that danced at your first drum circle; it was your body that gave birth to your child; it was your body that got down and dirty in the back seat of your dad's station wagon; it was your body that shivered, sweated, clasped its han...
If you had forgotten, it would quickly come back to you. Aloneness was like riding a bike. At gunpoint. With the gun in your own hand. Aloneness was the air in your tires, the wind in your hair. You didn't have to go looking for it with open arms. Wi...
