Vice & Violet (Pacific Shores Book 4)

by Sarah A. Bailey

“The complexity of wanting to hate you, and love you, and fuck you all at once.” I trace the outline of her beautiful face in the darkness, halted by the way she bites her lip as she watches me. “I want to run away from you and hold you closer at the same time. There are moments I wish I’d never met you, while painfully aware that I’d die without your existence.” My hand finds her jaw, thumb resting on her bottom lip and pulling it from her teeth. “I miss you even when I’m right next to you, and I loathe you when you’re far away. But one thing I always know for certain is that I’ll take you any way you come, any pain you cause, no matter how brief the moment, because simply experiencing you…it’s more valuable to me than the air I breathe.”

I think the hardest part of grief is that it’s not only unpredictable but unrelenting. No matter how much time passes, it never goes away.

So much has changed since those days and right now, but the sun still falls into the ocean, and the stars still circle above our heads, and I still love you. I need you to be reminded of that when you feel you are to blame, when you’re being swallowed by your guilt—I’m as steady as the sunset and the stars and the wild violets. I love you.”