Chloe Liese

“I love you,” I tell him. “And I’m terrified.”

I’d rather be afraid with you than fearless with anyone else

Books help me feel a bit more connected to a world that often is hard to make sense of. Books are patient with me. They don’t laugh at me instead of with me. They don’t ask why I’m “always” frowning, or why I can’t sit still. Books welcome me—weirdness and all—and take me exactly as I am

Reading a book is just like opening your heart to someone. You won't know if you'll connect until you try.

At some point, every love is a tragedy. It just doesn’t have to stay that way. We choose our endings. That’s Aristotle’s point. Tragedy is built—it has a structure. And if that’s not the ending you want, then you get out of that trajectory. You change the narrative.

'What are words? I used to have them.'
'I have a few.' I smile and nuzzle his nose. 'I love you.'
'I’ve got those, too,' he says quietly, as he opens his eyes again and looks at me, right to the heart of me, fingers gliding through my hair. 'I love you, Sigrid. So much.'
'Not "too much"?'
He grins and nuzzles my nose, too. 'No such thing.'

Progress not perfection.

Somewhere along the way, the people who loved her best lost sight of the fact that just because you’ve lived one way for a time doesn’t mean you want to live that way always, that your struggle to evolve isn’t an indicator of a lack of desire to evolve. It just means… it’s hard. And it might be a hell of a lot easier if the people around you saw your possibility.

In another world—in which he wasn’t an unapologetic jerk—I could mistake him for one of those morally gray villains who star in the fantasy romances I’ve been reading since adolescence. Dangerous and dark haired, inked and angry. Villains who ultimately redeem themselves, revealing their true natures when they prove themselves to be profoundly good, feminist, sacrificial heroes.
I know. It’s called fantasy romance for a reason.

'I don’t know how lovely having my head in the clouds is when it means I trip while walking.'
'That’s why I’m here,' he says. 'To catch you. […]'

'It means a lot that you didn’t act like you see me differently now.'
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear as the wind whips it across my face. 'I don’t see you differently. I see you better.'

Wrong is right and right is wrong.
I foresee war—merry or misery, brief or long?
A mountain looms built on deception.
Surmount it and then learn your lesson.