L. Creeke > Quotes

“I don’t know what I’m doing, what I feel. I’m just so tired of being scared all of the time.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“Without meaning to, I pictured myself there. Fresh bread cooling on the counter. I pictured Sawyer sitting at the little table, waiting for me to join her for supper after a day of working. I pictured laughter and peaceful, quiet halls. The image arrived so naturally it startled me. Because it wasn’t my memory. It was simply something I wanted. And it was something I never expected to have.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“If you’re tryin’ to make me fall harder for you, Lot… it’s workin’.” “I would venture to say that you’ve already gone completely mad for me.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“Curled up against her was the safest I’d felt in a long time. A soft hum escaped me before I could stop it. “Better?” she asked. “Mm,” I breathed. “You’re so warm and soft and safe. You smell so good. I just want to lay right here forever.” I burrowed closer, wrapping my arm around her waist. Sawyer let hers come around me in return, her hand rubbing slow circles at my hip. “It’s all yours, Lottie,” she murmured, voice low and sure. “Forever suits me just fine.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“That. That right there,” I told her. “You knew what I needed before I said a word. You always light mine before yours. You make sure I’m warm. You…” I trailed off, shaking my head. “Why? I don’t think I’ve met anyone like you in my entire life.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“My eyes fell to that familiar hand, roughened from years of work and scarred in places I knew by heart. That open palm had once been the first thing in my life that asked instead of demanded.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“This place…” I gestured behind me at the stream. “It’s somewhere I can’t avoid. I’m sick of it sending me somewhere in my head that I can’t escape from.” I blinked back a few tears as Sawyer’s hands finally came up to touch me, wiping away the stray drops. I leaned into her touch and hummed. My breath caught just a bit as I spoke again. “The water and the cold… it’s too much sometimes. Please, just make me forget. Just for a minute. Give me somewhere else to get lost in next time.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“It seemed that Sawyer was just as content as I was, blissfully unaware of anything apart from here and now. I knew better than that though. Sawyer was always prepared, always watching and always ready. My suspicions confirmed when I saw the pistol holstered at her hip, a silent but certain promise.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“days hadn’t always been this slow, but Lottie needed time to warm up to the day. And whatever Lottie needed is what I did. So now, my mornings crawled by and I found peace in the new routine.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“I had always been a force to be reckoned with, a wildflower trying to sprout in a bed of thorned roses, but I felt a piece of myself break and crumble to nothing.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“But I firmly believed that safety meant the absence of calculation. I no longer weighed every word before speaking. I no longer watched every face around the room searching for the first sign of temper. I simply existed.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“would stare at the same moon every night, and I would beg and pray and plead, to just… disappear. I wished for Death himself to come and claim my soul. I longed for eternal nothingness because being nothing was better than the something I was living”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“Lottie, you broke me wide open, you know that?” I kissed her again, gentle and quick. “I been haunted since the day I met you. You got in my blood, darlin’. In my marrow.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“But I’m tellin’ you, don’t ever think you are less than a goddamn privilege to care for.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“She grinned at me. “Anyone ever told you that you seem like trouble?” “Only every day of my life,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “Trouble suits you fine,” Sawyer said. And then she fucking winked at me.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“It was repetitive in the gentlest sort of way. Every morning the same. Every evening familiar. I found comfort in that after spending the entirety of my existence surrounded by unpredictability and cruelty, waiting for the next terrible thing to happen.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“Because now, my favorite color is the blue-gray of your eyes. They shine bright, almost silver, in the moonlight. Dark and stormy when you’re angry.” I swallowed. “What was it before you met me?” She looked up at the stars. “That’s just it. I didn’t have a color. You can’t have a color if your life is filled with all the bad things.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “And then you showed up and became all the good things. Now I have a color.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“I found myself praying that whatever had died between us hadn’t been buried deep enough to stay there.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“What right did you have? You thought a letter was sufficient, Sawyer? Informing me that I was to be free. That I was to find someone else to love. As though love was something I might simply reassign.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“I promise, Lottie. Every day.” The answer should have soothed me. Instead, something inside me cracked and I closed my eyes. Every day. Such simple words. People said them without thinking, without understanding. People believed it so easily too. But I had learned long ago that forever could become never in the span of a single heartbeat. My parents had taught me that. Hell, life had taught me that. And Sawyer had taught me that too.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“Yes. Her coat. The same one she wrapped around me every night. I woke up without her and without her coat. I’ve been frozen since.” I lit a cigarette. “What kind of person takes a coat from someone in the middle of a cold night?” “Same kind of person who gives Heaven freely and yanks it away just as fast.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“You can’t leave me again.” The words came out smaller than I intended. Sawyer took a step closer to me. “Lot—” “No.” My voice shook. “No, you need to hear me.” I pressed my hands together to stop them trembling. The room suddenly felt too tight. The air was too thin. “You can’t leave me again. I won’t survive it.” A tear slipped free before I could stop it. I laughed once, bitter and embarrassed. “I know how dramatic that sounds.” “It don’t.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“No one has ever considered me with such reverence, with such fire. No one has ever considered my safety,” she hushed. “No one has ever considered me at all, really.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“This was my chance. I’d been afraid before. I’d been broken and starved. I’d been violated and left for dead. I’d been abandoned and alone. But I wasn’t any of that now. I was the consequence of what they made me into. I was the retribution no one expected. And I was ready to settle the score.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“I exhaled against her mouth like a dying woman finally tasting air. God, I’d missed her.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“I want you to have something that belongs to you. I want you to spend your days doing something you want to do. Not something you have to do. And not something you think you need to do.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her

“What’s your favorite color?” she asked me. I laughed now, “What?” “Your favorite color. What’s the color you think of when you think of all the good things in life?”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“Shh, shh. I ain’t leavin’, baby,” she said. “You got me long as you want me, and I’ll stick ‘round after you don’t—for good measure.” Her promise was half-tease, half-vow, delivered with iron and the sweetest lullaby of a voice I’d ever heard.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“Sawyer… I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but the minute I heard you say my name, I knew then that my life would never look the same again. I care for you in a way that I have never cared for another. Like my spirit has known you my whole life. Like I was made to fit into you.”
― L. Creeke, When Embers Find Her

“But what if I am terrible at it?” “Then you’ll learn.” She said it so simply. No reassurance that I would naturally be wonderful at everything. No insistence that failure was impossible. Just that I would learn, and for some reason, that helped more.”
― L. Creeke, Where Ashes Bury Her