haven

“He's still looking in my eyes. Staring me down like he did that dragon, chin tilted and locked. "I'm not the Chosen One," he says.
I meet his gaze and sneer. My arm is a steel band around his waist. "I choose you," I say. "Simon Snow, I choose you.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Carry On

“Coriolanus could see that Festus was falling for her. Did you tell your best friend his crush was a cannibal? Never a rule book when you needed one.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

“She hadn't been perfect. She hadn't even been easy. But she had been mine.”
― Kat Dunn, Bitterthorn

“What would I give, to be seen? To be carefully studied and perfectly understood? Would I let someone carve me up, if it meant feeling like I was loved? I knew the answer was yes, because it had always been yes. I had let others bleed me dry for the sake of feeling wanted, even before Dracula came into my life. I wasn’t any different from the Lover. Staring into a face I adored and finding only pathetic need and madness, my questions shifted. I no longer cared why Dracula had killed and changed me. I wondered why I had let it happen.”
― Kiersten White, Lucy Undying