Maria’s Profile

“His chest, heaving harder this time. His words, almost gasping this time. “You destroy me.”
I am falling to pieces in his arms.
My fists are full of unlucky pennies and my heart is a jukebox demanding a few nickels and my head is flipping quarters heads or tails heads or tails heads or tails heads or tails
“Juliette,” he says, and he mouths the name, barely speaking at all, and he’s pouring molten lava into my limbs and I never even knew I could melt straight to death.
“I want you,” he says. He says “I want all of you. I want you inside and out and catching your breath and aching for me like I ache for you.” He says it like it’s a lit cigarette lodged in his throat, like he wants to dip me in warm honey and he says “It’s never been a secret. I’ve never tried to hide that from you. I’ve never pretended I wanted anything less.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“She needed to know more. “But that means…”

“It means I love you, Violet. I have never said that aloud to another human being.”

He said it quickly and tonelessly. As if he was afraid of the words. Violet stood basking in those words the way she might a sunbeam after a long, gray day. She closed her eyes. And she knew she was lit from within.

“Do not let me just stand here having said those words,” he said stiffly. “It’s undignified.”

“I love you, too,” she said softly, hurriedly. Feeling abashed. Eyes still closed. Egads. So this was what it was like to be in love. Awkward and foolish, indeed.”
― Julie Anne Long, I Kissed an Earl

“Until the battle with the Revanche he hadn’t thought he would ever tire of gazing at the horizon. Only since then had he noticed that the view was . . . empty.”
― Suzanne Enoch, Rules of an Engagement

“Sometimes people fall in love with those who do not return the same strength of feelings. It is as it is,” he said with a quiet intensity. “What Igive, I give freely. You owe me nothing, not love, not friendship, not even obligation”
― Sherry Thomas