If You Stayed: A Haunting Second Chance Romance

by Brittainy C. Cherry

That was the problem with falling in love when you were out of love with yourself: even monsters looked appealing then.

I went to hold him because he had no one to hold him through the sad part. Everyone should have somebody to hold them during the sad parts.

Maybe that’s what death did to the people who were still stuck being alive—changed them forever.

Mom taught me that whenever things were heated in the kitchen, it worked best to turn down the temperature on the stove instead of allowing things to boil over and make a bigger mess.

The problem with being a parent was that when you were in the middle of anxiety attacks, you still had to take care of someone beside yourself.

That’s why I read my books. Fictional men will always do better by me than real boys. Men written by women are just better.”

“It means the idea of boys is actually better than the reality of them.”

But also, never change yourself to fit into another person’s box. Create your own life and ignore the opinions of others.

“Are you happy, Kierra?” “No,” she quickly replied. “But maybe some people aren’t meant to be happy. Maybe some people are just meant to be heartbroken.”

but just because people had reasons for the way they were didn’t mean that they had excuses.

But that’s the issue with advice: it’s easier to give it to others than to give it to yourself.

Being a mother meant you pushed your own problems so far away to take care of others. Being a mother meant you lost yourself to save your babies. How dare Gabriel even ask me that type of question. Of course I was all right. It was the only thing us mothers were ever allowed to be—at least on the outside. On the outside we’d pretend that everything was amazing and wonderful, even though the world within us was crumbling into a million pieces.

“For the first time in years, you make me feel seen. You make me feel…good enough. I haven’t felt like that in such a long time.”

“Whatever you need from me, I’ll do. Whenever you need me, call me. No matter what. I’ll always answer.”

“If I lost my memory every single day for the rest of my life, I would still find my way back to loving you. I’d love every version of you.

“When two souls are tangled in forever…” I whispered. “Then forever is what they’ll be,” he whispered back.

“Because I finally know what love is. It’s patience during the storms. It’s sometimes waiting. I’ll wait for you.”

Love wasn’t always perfect. It often came with bends and cracks. The greatest heartbreaks always came from love more than they came from hatred.

I hated when I woke each day, because that was the problem with dreams—they didn’t lead to reality. They just remained within the darkness.

That was the thing about love, real love, that is. One had to be willing to let it go in order to not hold the other back from finding their joy.