Written in the Stars (Written in the Stars #1)

by Alexandria Bellefleur

Hunger transformed Elle into an instant-gratification seeking Veruca Salt, albeit hopefully less bitchy.

“Life. I’ve been super swamped with life. Adulting. Bills, taxes, existential doom. You never told me it was such a drag.”

Elle was tired of everyone looking at her like she was a mess when she was just trying her best.

Elle was technicolor chaos and the feelings she inspired in Darcy were a hazard straight out of Pandora’s box.

tried to heterotextualize my feelings for a while

He jerked a

thumb over his shoulder to the guy holding a chubby dachshund. “That’s the love of my life. And then there’s my husband, Mike.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Always good to know...

Elle loved herself, but what a feeling it must be, being loved by someone else exactly as you are, quirks and warts and all. She wouldn’t know.

but I’d rather fail at something I love than succeed at something I don’t.”

Elle laughed and Darcy’s chest ached as if something inside her was stretching, making space. Growing pains. “Eventually, when those massive stars reach the end of their lives, they go out with a bang, a supernova so bright, so beautiful it drowns out all the other stars. And when they do, they throw out all those elements they created. That’s what we’re made of. We’ve got calcium in our bones and iron in our blood and nitrogen in our DNA . . . and all of that? It comes from those stars.” Elle’s eyes glistened, sparkling as bright as the stars she spoke of as she blinked and pointed up at the sky. “We are literally made of stardust.”

A connection was what Elle craved. To see and be seen, then to take that one step further and for someone, for Darcy, to like what they saw enough to want to stick around and see more.

Before this moment, she’d never realized what a lonely job it was, protecting a fragile heart.

“You feel how you feel and that’s not going to change just because you didn’t tell her, because you didn’t say the words. I mean, you didn’t stop loving her after the party the other night, did you? How you feel . . . that’s not really the question, is it? It’s whether you’re going to let Elle in. Whether you’re going to let her love you the way you deserve to be loved, Darce.”