Joane

“Then I’ll love you with the same intensity that you hate me. I’ll hold on to you just as hard as you push me away. I’ll fix you like you’re fixing me. I’ll always be here, Ophelia, I’ll sit at the bottom of valleys and stand on the top of mountains with you. We’re too good not to work.”
― Autumn Woods, Nightshade

“I wish I had a good reason for saving you. I wish it was logical or rational, informed by any semblance of reason. I wish more than anything my first thought when I emerged from the water was not of you, that I hadn’t been prepared to tear through every grain of sand and burn every tree in this damned place until I found you.”
― Sara Hashem, The Jasad Crown

“Why hadn’t they told him that love was not a soft and gentle wind, but a storm determined to rip you apart and build its home in the wreckage? That it brought with it uninvited guests, new fears and worries and paranoias beyond the reach of any reason.
How in those early days, before he knew what was happening, he would lose his breath at the thought of a future without her. A future where the guests would be gone, but so would his new home. The home she had carved inside him, where the air smelled like her hair and the bells sounded like her laugh. A place where he could rest until he was old and weary, where he could only sleep with his hand settled over her heart, because even so many years later, that steady pulse was the only pillar Arin would ever lean on.
Death, he learned, did not change anything. It didn’t destroy their home; it simply barred Arin from entering. It meant years waiting on the steps.”
― Sara Hashem, The Jasad Crown

“Yes.” Reed stopped pacing, coming to a dead stop a few feet away. He stared at me, jaw clenched tight, hands balled even tighter. “Yes, Halley, I’m in love with you. I think I proved that when I threw myself under the bus and completely destroyed my relationship with my daughter to protect you. To keep her from hating you,” he gritted out. “So, yes…I love you. I love you fiercely, wholly, selfishly and unselfishly, more than I ever fucking should. I love everything about you, from your smile, to your perfect heart, to the way your hair always slips from your ponytail when you’re running or sparring and hides those eyes I’ve been enamored with since the moment I first saw you. I love how you take every picture like it’s the only one you’ll ever take, how you love like it’s simply a way of life, and how you cook from your soul because it makes everyone around you so goddamn happy. I love the strength you pulled from nothing, from bare bones and rock bottom, and how you choose to dance through life with grace and courage, finding music in every soundless shadow, when anyone else would have laid down and died.” He choked out the last words, emotion catching in his throat as his chest puffed with the weight of each breath. “Now…tell me how that changes anything.”
― Jennifer Hartmann, Older