Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark (Magnolia Parks Universe, #5)

by Jessa Hastings

I look over at him and he gives me a quarter smile, gentle, laced with this specific brand of sadness he keeps on the highest-up shelf just for me, then he fishes an ice cube out of his water glass and holds it against my wrist, drawing circles. It distracts me enough, pulls me out of the moment, grounds me.

“I feel that it’s important you know that even if I didn’t love you in the sort of stupid, embarrassing way that I do; if I did, hypothetically, have a choice—I would choose you anyway.”

There’s a violence to loving someone sometimes.