I CRIED

✨“You cannot call him that. We don’t need patients hearing nurses whispering about a Dr. Death.” “Can we call him Doctor D?” “No.” “Why?” “Because Doctor D sounds like a penis thing.”

✨The only problem with anger is that it burns hot and fast. It doesn’t tend to burn long. Sadness burns long. Grief. Disappointment.

✨I went back to my side of the ER, running the whole awkward encounter through my head over and over, obsessing about what I should have said or should have done. So stupid.

✨I’d always had a hard time making new friends. I got nervous in unfamiliar social settings, so I would say the wrong thing or become withdrawn, so it took time for people to warm up to me.

✨I will however accept your invitation to be invited and never come. That sounds like an excellent time. I also enjoy not answering calls, not networking, never leaving the house, and hanging out with my dog.

✨I must return to my isolation now. I need twenty to twenty-two hours of alone time a day to function.

✨I’ve barely seen him in the week that he’s been here. He’s sort of freaked out being in the new place and he hides. I only know he’s alive because he does this 3: 00 a.m. zoomy thing where he tears through my house and somehow gets involved with the blinds?

✨It was a small, invisible gesture of friendship from me. Something she’d likely never even fully appreciate because she didn’t know the effort that came with it. She’d just think I watch the same popular show she does and that would be it. This was me making space for her, even though she would never know it. My way of saying thank you for her friendship, even if it was too quiet to hear.

✨It took me a long time to feel comfortable doing a lot of things in front of someone.

✨I relaxed a little. I had to remember that not everyone overthought everything the way I did. Wouldn’t it be amazing to live like that? To not carry that burden around with you. To not feel constantly overwhelmed and overstimulated and second-guess every little thing.

✨“Do you remember teleporting when you were little?”

“My dad was gone by the time I was eight. I never teleported again after that. There wasn’t anyone strong enough to carry me.” I paused for a long moment. “Men have only ever left me, Ali,”

“You never realize you’re living the best time of your life,” I said softly. “It happens and then it ends, and you only see it for what it was after.

✨He had his own private code of ethics. I didn’t have that kind of grace. My high road was currently under construction. But it made me like him so much. And all the stories his family told did too. I wanted to go back in time and hold baby Jacob. Be his friend in high school and tell all his bullies to fuck off. I sort of wanted to tell Jewel to fuck off too…

✨But I didn’t want anyone else in this bed with him either. The idea made me feel sort of panicked. I didn’t want anyone else to get handwritten letters. I didn’t want him to smile at another woman or hang out with them. I felt oddly possessive of him and this little universe we’d built, which was equal parts ridiculous and scary, because how much of our universe was even real?

✨“She’s not a mean person. I don’t think that came out the way she intended.” “Yeah, well, she’d better learn to be a little more intentional when it comes to you, because I’m not going to put up with it. I was two seconds away from taking my hoops out.”

✨It was weird to say, but she made me feel alone—the way I felt when I was by myself. Calm and unaffected. Like it was just us here and not a hundred other people. I liked being alone. With her.

✨you’re with someone who doesn’t speak your language, you’ll spend a lifetime having to translate your soul?

✨I’d leave my comfort zone. I had to. Because that’s where she was. And for her I would go anywhere.

✨She understands you, even when you don’t say anything at all…

✨Jacob made me feel safe. He was like a living lullaby. A softly spoken word. The smell of coffee and toast in the morning or a cozy fleece blanket. The rain pattering on the roof on a day where you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything.

✨“I’m sorry someone made you feel like it’s hard to love you,”

✨It turned into breakfast the next morning and then dinner the following night and then finally after so many sleepovers you just move in with each other because being together is so organic that doing anything else would be ridiculous.

✨Jacob was who he said he was. All the time. And to me, men were never who they said they were. But this one, by all accounts, sort of was. And it scared the absolute shit out of me.

✨I wouldn’t have to continue to be braced for the big letdown when Jacob Maddox showed me his true colors. I could just go, “Ah. There it is.” And then my heart would start making the building blocks again for the wall I liked to keep around it. I think, subconsciously, that was what I was hoping for. I wanted him to disappoint me. I wanted to get past the façade that everyone shows the rest of the world and see who he really was unscripted.

✨would you never hurt me or leave me?

✨Then I picked her up and carried her to bed. And while she was cradled in my arms, she muttered something about teleporting.

✨“Will you still love me when I don’t have any more organs to give?” I asked. “I’d love you even if you were a talking head in a jar,” she said, speaking to my lips. “I’d love you even if you didn’t like dogs.” She gasped. “I’d love you even if I was a gummy bear and you ate me,”

✨Jacob was a man. And men do what men do. I suddenly viewed my sweet, docile boyfriend like a wild animal raised in captivity. Tame and domesticated—but might still bite one day, just because the instinct was bred into his genes.

✨“You are perfect, Jacob. But I am not. You won’t always want me and I’ll always be braced for it. I’ll never relax. I’ll be waiting for the shoe to drop. I’ll never feel secure. I’ll never really trust you. I’ll just push you away and I’ll be miserable and I’ll make you miserable.” “I’m miserable without you,” I said. “That’s what makes me miserable.”

✨“We’re all a little broken, Briana. We are a mosaic. We’re made up of all those we’ve met and all the things we’ve been through. There are parts of us that are colorful and dark and jagged and beautiful. And I love every piece of you. Even the ones you wish didn’t exist.”

✨I didn’t even want to go to sleep because I’d rather be awake and with the woman I love than risk being alone in my dreams…

✨Dearest Briana, I know you’re scared. You have every right to be. But someday, decades from now, when our grandchildren are grown and our hair is gray, and we’ve spent a lifetime being harmless to each other, you’re going to find this letter yellowed and wrinkled, forgotten in a shoebox. You’ll read it and you’ll remember how frightened and unsure you were once. How afraid you were to give yourself to someone, how hard it was to trust again—and you’ll smile. Because I’ll still be there. And we will still be in love.

Yours truly, Jacob💞

The anxiety rep is so good!!!!

well, what can i say. love shows up.

i thought i needed easy contemporary romance after finishing mistborn back to back, yet i felt more drained than i’ve ever been after reading the most depressing fantasy series. yeah, sure, this is funny, i was laughing most of the time. both briana and jacob were lovable. i had a fun time, and it was a great book so far… until it wasn’t. it was far too long for my liking (for romance), especially with the never-ending misunderstandings. i actually think 200 pages of THAT TROPE was too much, yet here they gave me 400 pages of it. literally every character in this book kept telling both main characters how grossly in love they looked—literally everyone saw it but them—and they very much wanted to eat each other’s faces the whole time WHAT THE FUCK WAS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND. i was going to give this one 4 stars, but they lost me at over 300 pages they spent not being able to communicate well. it’s not even slow burn and pining anymore, it’s just plain annoying and frustrating. it could’ve been used for a last-minute additional conflict. it was a good subplot tho, it should’ve been the one explored further. i wasn’t so bad that i would give this one or two stars its just wasn’t for me.

maybe i’ll just stick to high school romance 😭😭😭 adult love life is so fucking annoying.

It was perfect. I mean Abby wrote it in a way that it will get solid 5 stars without thinking. She wrote Jacob in the most perfect way. The book was so full of good quotes, I've never put so many of sticky notes as I did in this one! I though I'd wouldn't like any book as I've liked Just for the summer, but this one was way better!

"Love me. Just Love me instead. I'd take care of you. I'd protect you and shield you and be anything you needed. I'd be harmless to you..."

Dear Abby,

Please keep writing more books like this

Yours

This was good… until it wasn’t. It started regressing around like 70% in and I was just flipping through the pages until I reached the ending. I usually get through miscommunication with a breeze but this really pissed me off like every chapter was a problem atop more problems that could’ve been wrapped up chapters ago. I got sick of it, honestly. There goes the chances of me reading the first book.

♾️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

ABBY JIMENEZ you have done it once again. I laughed, I cried, laughed again, and then cried again. SO GOOD!

I felt very seen in Jacob's character

Literatly so so good. It was such an emotional read straight from the first 50 pages. I love Abby Jimenez books because she always manages to make them so emotional twisting. I stayed up a little longer just to finish it. Brianna and Jacob are literatly made for eachother I don't care what anyone says. The way he was a PERFECT kidney match for her brother just says so much.

Basically, the story follows Jacob and Brianna who are Doctors in a hospital together, where Jacob comes in as a new doctor after leaving his ex who got with his brother... And Brianna just got over her divorce with her ex husband called Nick... Jacob has like a huge anxiety disorder which is so heavily and well portrayed in this entire book. Because it's first person, we see his thoughts in real time, all the questions he asks himself, all of the worrying, questioning, thinking, there's no silence and I was so exhausted to see it happen and it was just really well done because of how real it felt.

It was very exhausting and annoying to have to get towards the end and we went in a loop about three times, where Brianna was going backwards, spirialing, stressing etc. It was horrible to have to watch and it was so frustrating? But it made sense to write it like this because it's realistic, it fits in with the trauma and it makes sense. I had to knock off half a star though, because of how INFURIATING it was.

Would totally recommend. Love Abby Jimenez.

Loved everything about this book. I’m a bit iffy with romance stories since everything and everyone is always repetitive and too perfect, unrealistic. The way it deals with two different traumas involving love, the anxiety he deals with, and depression of having a life changing medical condition is relatable enough.

I really enjoyed seeing how both Jacob and Briana were the perfect puzzle piece for each other. Will definitely read more Abby Jimenez in the future.

cried a lot

raged a lot

ugh

damn

It is a very relatable and great story. It has a lot of trigger warnings when it comes to anxiety, depression, sickness, and betrayals; and that's what makes the book relatable. Because at some point in our lives, we were Briana, we were Benny, we were Jacob.

"Have you ever heard that quote if you judged a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its while life believing that it's stupid?"

"Nothing is ever perfect. There's just matches that have a higher chance of working than others."

"Have you ever heard the saying that if you're with someone who doesn't speak your language, you'll spend a lifetime having to translate your soul."

"And no matter how well you know someone, or for how long, you can never be in their head."

4.5/5⭐️ • 1.5/5🌶️

Abby, hi I’m one of your new biggest fans! Absolutely obsessed with this book and I really predicted I would like this more than Part of Your World. The storyline of this was really strong and until the end it was ahead but ultimately decided to keep them level. I do understand having some miscommunication but how extensive this one was did become a little too much. But like I said the characters in the book it made sense to have some. But I really liked this book and I’m so excited to read more of Abby’s books soon!

this book took my breath away... i totally get it now. i get why so many people are talking abt this book. thinking about briana & jacob’s love makes me want to smile and scream and bawl my heart out. they were so perfect for each other, not in the way that fictional couples usually are, but their love is perfect AND realistic at the same time. realistic to the point that there were times when i wanted to scream into the void bc of the miscommunication trope. which totally makes sense, no matter how much it frustrated me. someone who has anxiety & who basically has overthinking ingrained into his system. someone who got cheated on & developed a trauma bc of how bad her past relationship was. i was frustrated bc of how the trope lasted for almost half of the book, but i never got pissed bc i understood why it happened. i understood the characters. i was able to connect with them on such a deep deep level. god.. people weren’t lying when they said that the anxiety representation in this book was top notch. it really was. i wanted to enter the book and hug and talk to jacob. HE IS ME. and i can only wish to have someone like briana who is easy to be with & would agree to be harmless to me & understand all my quiets. likewise, i can only wish to have someone like jacob whom i can have a quiet gentle life with, who lets me look into his soul, who never fails to show up. because that’s what love does. it shows up. and no matter how broken they both were, they’d never stop showing up for each other. their story touched my heart so much — it reminded me why i love reading, why i love consuming stories that fill the heart. thank you abby jimenez for this heartwarming masterpiece 🫶

I like that Abby’s books aren’t just happily ever after endings, you see real life struggles of individuals and the influence they have on the characters and their relationships.

Out of every book that i’ve read by Abby Jimenez, this one is definitely my favorite. Jacob and Briana have my heart in all the best ways

Love shows up.

Abby did it again. Damn I am Jacob and Jacob is me. I’ve never read a book where anxiety was written as accurately as this one. I loved every second of this book and I’m a sucker for a surprise pregnancy trope so that was a bonus 😉. I can’t wait to finish off my summer with her next book. Abby knows how to write a romance that goes deeper than most authors write.

beginning was a little rough i was screaming i hate miscommunication trope so much

yes. yes. and yes.

I can't believe doctors can be this silly

This ends with a trope I hate… and yet this was a 5 star read for me?!?! Like, damn. It was so good. I got really worried towards the end… but I feel like this book was everything I wanted it to be. Also — every time I thought I could predict what was going to happen, Jiminez totally upended my expectations.

the beginning (and some of the end) were a bit shaky for me but i really liked this! i loved the family dynamics and that both of the main characters felt like real people