Christa Chirico

“I thought you didn’t like holding hands,” I say.
“And you said you did,” he says.
“So, what? I just get whatever I want now?” I tease.
His smile flickers back into place, calm and restrained. “Yes, Poppy,” he says. “You get whatever you want now. Is that a problem?”
“What if I want you to have what you want?”
He arches an eyebrow. “Are you just saying that because you know what I’m going to say, and you want to make fun of me for it?”
“No?” I say. “Why? What are you going to say?”
Our hands go still between us. “I have what I want, Poppy.”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“I wish I could bottle this moment and wear it as a perfume. It would always be with me. Everywhere I went, he’d be there too, and so I’d always feel like myself.”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“When you do the right thing for the wrong reason, no one praises you. When you do the wrong thing for the right reason, everyone does, even though what is right and wrong depends entirely on the story you’re living in. And no one says they need recognition or praise or love, but we all hunger for it. We all want to be special.”
― Rachel Gillig, The Knight and the Moth

“Once, there was a foundling boy who didn’t believe in anything. He grew up, became a worldly knight, and still he struggled to believe. He bore hardly any hope, and a mountain of disdain. And that should have been the end.” He took my hand, squeezed it, tightening my hold on my hammer. “But then he came to a cathedral upon a tor, and met a woman there. And all the tales he’d troubled himself with about cruelty, about unfairness and godlessness… he started to forget. He was afforded another chance, as if by magic, to believe in something. He’d never be a very good knight, but every time he looked at the woman, he had the distinct faith”—his eyes roved my face—“that things could be better than they’d been.”
― Rachel Gillig, The Knight and the Moth