Lindsay

“You didn’t come.”

“You didn’t call.”

She looks down at their tangled hands. “Tell me, Luc,” she says. “Was any of it real?”

“What is real to you, Adeline? Since my love counts for nothing?”

“You are not capable of love.”

He scowls, his eyes flashing emerald. “Because I am not human? Because I do not wither and die?”

“No,” she says, drawing back her hand. “You are not capable of love because you cannot understand what it is to care for someone else more than yourself. If you loved me, you would have let me go by now.”

Luc flicks his fingers. “What nonsense,” he says. “It is because I love you that I won’t. Love is hungry. Love is selfish.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“It is a curious thing, is it not, that you can be more like him than he is himself.”
― Richard Swan, The Trials of Empire

“It was interesting for us to watch, how he didn’t even have to go anywhere in order to leave her.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“At the end as at the start, and through all the in-betweens, I love you.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War