Unbound Quotes

“These few days with you have meant more to me than years with any other woman ever could.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“I love your body, for everything it's given to me," he murmured. "For letting me...letting me inside you. After all that time. And your hands, for touching me, and your soft skin, for letting me touch you. For your mouth. And kissing you, and for the things you asked me. For your ears, for being willing to hear my answers.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Merry kept talking, but he lost the thread. She wandered closer. With the knots banished, she gripped the tail of the rope in her fist, making an L of her arm and winding the length around her elbow in uniform loops. Rough, rasping rope against that smooth, perfect skin. And Rob on his knees.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Scary as this was...telling her these things was like a bloodletting. The initial cut hurt like hell, but with it done he could feel the toxins escaping, making room for relief. And all at once he wanted to give in. With a blinding bolt of understanding, he realized he'd had it all wrong, blaming his fetish all this time, thinking of it as some twisted, fucked-up force that lived inside him. A thing to be drowned in liquor, glass by glass, night by night, year after year. It wasn't his desire that had poisoned him. It was his shame.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“The intensity echoed through her, the same excitement he felt. He knew what she wanted -- he'd sensed it. He could please her.

She wants your voice, as well as your body. And he didn't even need to think to find the right words to say. He simply let them fall from his lips to her ears. "I can't believe you're here," he murmured. "That you're real.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Those were the girls she’d been most jealous of, growing up—not just the thin, fashionable ones, but the types who surfed or rock climbed, who lived in such obvious peace with their bodies. Took joy in using their bodies. Mastered them. Merry’s had always felt like a bully. A great, heavy oaf pinning her to the ground, taunting.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“We just do as we’re told we should. High school, college, job, marriage, kids. Like, one size fits all.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Why did the cruelest words have the sharpest barbs? Why did they stick, while the kind ones fell away so quickly?”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“You can be fat, or you can be a bitch. But you can’t be a fat bitch. Bitchiness is a luxury only hot girls can afford.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Say thanks, not sorry. Women have been apologizing for too long.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Tell me how you feel about me, with your body”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“His admiration felt like sunshine on her naked skin, and her heart broke for the woman she’d been for so long, always running for the shadows.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“You’re the only woman who’s ever looked at me and . . . I don’t know. Seen inside me. Met the real me, I guess.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“He’d come out here really only feeling he was two-dimensional, at best. But she brought out so many sides of him. Ones he’d never even met before himself.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“I’m her slave, he imagined. Her toy. She owns me, completely. Again, like the bottle. Both Merry and the gin had proven harsh mistresses, but where Rob had once hid in the false comforts of his addiction, Merry’s indulgence drew him out—made him feel wildly, vibrantly conscious, when alcohol had only deadened. The bottle had been a blanket to cower beneath. This . . . This was exposure, pure and sharp.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Good job, fat girl! Who’d have guessed you had it in you?”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Keep talking. Keep saying stuff in that accent, all deep and dark and hard. Grocery list, blender manual, Wikipedia entry for gingivitis. Anything.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Why bother even completing a race if there’s no satisfaction in crossing the finish line, right?”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Did you need something?” he asked, frantically faking perkiness. Probably came off fucking manic.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“He needed a haircut. Had to be hovering somewhere between hippie and homeless.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“It was only when he’d gone off to university and learned to drink that he’d felt capable of the socializing necessary to foster friendships.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“Are you gay? Merry seriously doubted it. She’d been honing her gaydar for thirty-one years, and in the Castro of all places. Gay Mesopotamia.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“You really ought to reserve those feelings until you know what on earth sent this man fleeing civilized society to play Davy Crockett.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“The old Merry, she thought as they walked. Good riddance, you poor frightened thing.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“He pictured this charming girl lugging that heavy pack up and down the hills for weeks on end. If there was indeed a badass in this cottage, it wasn’t Rob.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“And you couldn’t talk her into coming back to the homeland for this trip?” Merry’s smile wilted. “She passed away, actually. A little over a year ago.” “Oh.” Perfect. His first attempt at speaking to another human being on a meaningful level, and he’d already dropped a clanger to the tune of her dead mum.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“From what? And how, so young? And why do you live like a hermit? What’s your deal? Are you a serial killer?”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“I may be dying. I’m not sure.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound

“The numbers were just markers people used to convince themselves how much better or worse they were than others, to calculate their relative human worth.”
― Cara McKenna, Unbound