Blurb:
Hardin has nothing to lose… except her.
After we collided…
Life will never be the same…
After a tumultuous beginning to their relationship, Tessa and Hardin were on the path to making things work. Tessa knew Hardin could be cruel, but when a bombshell revelation is dropped about the origins of their relationship – and Hardin’s mysterious past – Tessa is beside herself.
Hardin will always be… Hardin. But is he really the deep, thoughtful guy Tessa fell madly in love with, despite his angry exterior, or has he been a stranger all along? She wishes she could walk away, but it just isn’t that easy. Not with the memory of passionate nights wrapped in his arms… his electric touch… his hungry kisses…
Still, Tessa’s not sure she can endure one more broken promise. She put so much on hold for Hardin – university, friends, her relationship with her mother, a loving boyfriend, even her fledging career. She needs to move on.
Hardin knows he made a mistake, possibly the biggest one of his life, but he won’t be going down without a fight! But can he change… will he change… for love?
Rating: 3/5 stars
Side Notes:
- Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Contemporary Romance
- 2nd book in the After series
- Highly recommend for 16 years and above
- TW: explicit language, abusive behaviour, references to drug/alcohol/substance misuse, sexually graphic scenes
- Romance Tropes: Strangers to lovers, good girl bad boy, toxic romance
Book Quotes:
- “The best thing about reading is to escape from your life, to be able to live hundreds or even thousands of different lives. Nonfiction doesn’t have that power—it doesn’t change you the way fiction does.”
- “If you aren’t affected somehow, even in the slightest bit, you aren’t reading the right book.”
- “You aren’t some conquest of mine – you’re everything to me! You’re my breath, my pain, my heart, my life!”
- “Is love always like this? Is it always so passionate, yet so damn painful?”
- “It’s dark meets light; it’s chaotic perfection; it’s everything I fear, want, and need.”
- “I don’t really care for fiction.” “How can you not? The best thing about reading is to escape from your life, to be able to live hundreds or even thousands of different lives. Non-fiction doesn’t have that power- it doesn’t change you like fiction does.” “Change you?” He raises his brow. “Yes, change you. If you aren’t affected somehow, even in the slightest bit, you aren’t reading the right book. I would like to think that every novel I’ve read has become a part of me, created who I am, in a sense.”
- “Sometimes you just have to choose to let things go, to move on.”
- “The blond-haired girl in the long skirts who obsessively makes long to-do lists crept her way inside of me until, slowly, I fell for her so hard that I couldn’t believe it.”
- “What hurts the most? Rejection..”
- “Just because he can’t love you the way you want him to doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you with everything he has”
- “No one is truly innocent in this world, no one. The people who believe themselves to be perfect are the worst ones of all.”
- “I can’t promise that I won’t hurt you again, but I can swear that I will love you until the day that I die.”
- “My grandmother used to tell me that cupcakes are good for the soul. If I need anything, it’s something for my soul.”
- “Most of the novels that I’ve read led me to believe quarrels come and go in the blink of an eye, a simple apology will bandage any problem and everything will be worked out within minutes. The novels lie. Maybe that’s why I’m so enamored with Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice; both are incredibly romantic in their own way, but they reveal the truth behind blind love and promises of forever”
- “There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency”
- “People don’t get married for the right reasons anymore, not that they ever did. In the past it was for status or money, and now it’s only to be sure you won’t be lonely and miserable—two things nearly every married person still feels anyway”
- “He said he wasn’t going to let this go, but he did. He let it go, and he let me go.”
- “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
- “There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”
- “You should travel and see everything you possibly can. A woman like you shouldn’t be kept in a box.”
- “That’s why we are so good for each other. Because we’re terrible for each other.”
- “She was one of those people that didn’t belong here with the rest of us. She was too good, you know? My family got to have more time with her than we deserved, and I wouldn’t change a thing,”
- “But the worst feeling in the world is loving someone who doesn’t love you.”
- “It’s not so easy to walk away from someone when he has made his way into every cell, when he has taken over every thought, and he has been responsible for the best and worst feelings I’ve ever had. no one, not even the doubting part of me, can make me feel bad for loving passionately and hoping desperately that I could have that great love that I’ve read about in novels.”
- “So don’t you sit here and tell me that it’s been hard for you because you did this! You fucking ruined everything! Just like you always do, so you know what? I don’t feel sorry for you . . . Actually I do. I feel sorry for you because you will never be happy. You will be alone for the rest of your life, and for that I feel sorry for you. I’ll move on, find a nice man who’ll treat me the way you should have, and we’ll get married and have children. I will be happy.”
- “I know that no matter how much we fight, we will always find a way back to each other. Always.”
- “She’s always there for me, Mum. She always forgives me, even when she shouldn’t. She always says the right thing. She calms me, but challenges me—she makes me want to be a better man. I know I’m a shitty person, I know that. I have done so much shit, but Tessa can’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone anymore, and I’ll never love anyone again—she is it for me. I know it. She’s my ultimate sin, Mum, and I’ll gladly be damned for her.”
- “nothing exists except this letter, these perfect words from my imperfect Hardin.”