Valentina Dqe

“Wren?' he says. 'Talk to me.'

I don't reply. What would be the point? I know he will twist me around his finger with words. I know that if I give him half the chance, love-starved creature that I am, I will be under his spell again. With him, I am forever a night-blooming flower, attracted and repelled by the heat of the sun.

'Let me explain,' he calls to me. 'Let me atone.'

I bite the tip of my tongue to keep myself from snapping at him. He meant to keep me ignorant. He tricked me. He lied with every smile. With every kiss. With the warmth in his eyes that should have been impossible to fake.

I'd know what he was capable of. Over and over, he'd shown me. And over and over, I believed there would be no more tricks. No more secrets.

Not anymore.

'You have good cause to be furious. But you couldn't have lied, had you known the truth. I was afraid you'd have to lie.' He waits, and when I say nothing, rolls into a sitting position. 'Wren?'

I can see the leather straps running across his cheeks. If he wears the bridle long enough, he'll have scars.

'Talk to me!' he shouts, standing and coming to the bars. I see the gold of his hair, the sharp lines of his cheekbones, the glint of his fox eyes. 'Wren! Wren!'

Coward that I am, I flee. My heart thundering, my hands shaking. But I can't pretend that I don't like the sound of him screaming my name.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“You believe someone not because you have no doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

“You have to ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don’t understand, and do the work to learn what you need to learn as quickly as you can.”
― Robert Iger, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company

“I had trusted him. I had even trusted him after he betrayed me. I was too open for my own good. I still gave that man my heart even after he destroyed it.”
― Jacqueline Simon Gunn, Let Love Rule