The Last Letter

by Rebecca Yarros

I have zero connections to the world around me. Most of the time I’m good with that, but tonight I’m wondering what it’s like to be you. To have so much responsibility, and so many people depending on you. If I could ask you one question, that would be it: What’s it like to be the center of someone’s universe?

“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.”

She’d given me gravity when everything went sideways.

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

He put on a great act, but he wasn’t some big, strong man who was going to carry me away to college and build this amazing life. 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.”

I’d be okay. Because I had to be. I had Colt and Maisie to take care of. I didn’t have the luxury of falling apart like some lovesick girl.

She was all shiny, like a new penny. But in the last eighteen months, I’d learned that I liked a little bit of tarnish. It gave depth to the lines and made the shiny parts all the more eye-catching.