The Last Letter

by Rebecca Yarros

Me? I’m always doing what I have to, and never what I really should be, or what I want to.

“Someone once told me that swearing is a poor excuse for a crap vocabulary. It makes you look low class and uneducated.

I like that you write in pen. It means you don’t go back and censor yourself. You don’t overthink, just write what you mean. I bet you’re like that in person, too—saying what you think.

“Only boring people are bored?”

“Looking on the internet will convince you that a cold is meningitis and a leg pain is a giant blood clot ready to dislodge and kill you.”

If she’s not talking to you it’s not because she’s a wilting wallflower, it’s because she simply doesn’t think you’re worth her time.

“Sometimes you have to leave so you can know what it is you left. You don’t really value something until you’ve lost it.”

What would it be like to have someone ground you? Was it comforting to feel that safety? Or was it suffocating? Was it the kind of force you relied on or the type you fled?

How similar their features looked. How different their little souls were.

Help her even when she swears she’s fine.

I’ll save you a seat on the other side, brother, but take your time. Take every single second you can. You are the only brother I would have wished for, and my very best friend. And just in case no one ever told you—you’re worthy. Of love. Of family. Of home.

My call sign is Chaos. I miss you and your letters so damn much. I crave your words more than oxygen. I’m so sorry about Ryan. I don’t deserve to be here. He does.

somewhere between letter number one and letter number twenty-four, I’d fallen in love with her. Fallen for her words, her strength, her insight and kindness, her grace under impossible circumstances, her love for her children, and her determination to stand on her own. I could list a thousand reasons that woman owned whatever heart I had. But none of them mattered because, even though she was the woman I loved, to her, I was just a stranger. An unwelcome one at that.

The lies had always been worse than the leaving.

Honest, bad choices, I could handle. Lies were intentional, inflicted pain for selfish reasons, and unforgivable.

“You’re getting out because…” Her head tilted, so much like Colt’s. “You know why.”

Guys with puppies. Guys with kids. Either one was guaranteed to snag my attention, and this guy had both.

Help her even when she swears she’s fine. Don’t make her go through it alone.

“She looks like such a docile little thing. You’d never guess she’d be capable of ripping someone apart.” “She’s like any other woman in that regard, ma’am.”

I’d rather be great for a few people than be mediocre for a bunch.

regret doesn’t really get us anywhere, does it? There’s no point rehashing things that have happened when we need to move forward.

You let my best friend borrow yours.”

If I couldn’t care for her heart, I could at least sustain her body.

I can’t remember what the world looked like before I held them, but I know it wasn’t half this vibrant.”

“Ah, the sweet, illogical logic of a child,”

“Don’t let go,” she whispered. Her hands were still between us, but she wasn’t pushing me away, they were simply resting on my pecs. If anything, she leaned in. “I’d forgotten what this felt like.” “Being hugged?” My voice was sandpaper-rough. “Being held together.”

You can’t turn away every good thing that comes to you because you’re scared of what might happen, or not happen. That’s the coward’s way out, and you are no coward.

You’re free to choose, but you’re not free of the consequences of your choice.

sometimes the losses are just as important as the wins. The wins feel really good and let us celebrate what we did right. But the losses, they teach us more. They teach us to see where we can improve, and yeah, they feel pretty darn bad, and that’s okay. As you get bigger, you’ll see that it’s not how you handle the wins that make you a good man, it’s how you handle the losses.”

He was a scared little boy who couldn’t put anyone else first, and that included me.

of course they have a father, because babies have to have a father and a mother. But they don’t have a dad. Because while all men can be fathers, not all of them are qualified to be daddies, and theirs just wasn’t.”

Honor is a fabulous thing, but sometimes pride can be a lot stronger, especially when you convince yourself it’s for the good of the other person.”

I think that’s just part of having two kids. You do the best you can by both and hope it all equals out in the end.

The guilt means you’re a great mom,

“I’m just helping her out.” He seemed to ponder that for a minute and then nodded. “Good. That’s good. She needs all the help she can get right now with her kids.” “No,” I corrected, my eyes scanning the forest line just in case we found our hiker. “She doesn’t need help; she’s honestly got it handled all on her own. But I need to help her. I don’t want her to have to handle it solo. There’s a difference.”

Why does the world take the people who are loved, ripping holes in the fabric of other people’s souls,

Man, I hated hope. Hope fooled you, gave you the warm fuzzy feelings just to yank them away again.

“Don’t you dare lie to me. The men in my life have a habit of promising with one hand and packing with the other.”

“Don’t make me lie to you,” he begged…or threatened. I couldn’t tell.

“Funny thing about broken hearts—only the living have them.”

“You’re not scared to trust him with the kids. You’re scared to trust him with you.”

Grief means you had someone worth grieving.”

“You’re stunning. You don’t need makeup. There has never been a moment since I met you that I saw you as anything less than an incredible, exquisitely beautiful woman. But I understand that you don’t feel the way I see you.

You have the ability to love beyond yourself, to risk your heart every day through your kids.

Little bullies grow up to be big bullies.

I’ve had sex with one guy, Hailey. One. And that was seven years ago. To tell you the truth, it didn’t exactly ring my bell.” “Because he probably didn’t know where to find your bell.”

You could throw in an F-bomb if it meant you were interested in using it as a verb.”

“I’ve loved you since the beginning. Nice to know you caught up.”

Time moved slower when you missed the person you love.

There was no point trying to change each other, we either wanted to grow or change ourselves, or we didn’t. After you accepted that about someone and still loved them, you were pretty much indestructible.