Ever After Always (Bergman Brothers, #3)

by Chloe Liese

“In the words of the inimitable Lisa Kleypas, ‘Marriage isn’t the end of the story, it’s the beginning. And it demands the effort of both partners to make a success of it.’”

“This idea that you’re all on your own, that your financial success or failure equates to your success or failure as a man. It’s seriously damaging, and it’s the lie that an oppressive capitalist patriarchal society wants us to live enslaved to.”

Struggling will never make you less of a man or less of a husband to Freya. Struggling means you’ve been brave. It means you’re showing up to life and trying. And that’s enough, man. More than enough.”

There’s a lie we’ve been told in our culture that our romantic partner’s attunement to our emotions and thoughts should be nearly psychic, and that is the barometer of our intimacy. If we feel like they aren’t ‘getting’ us, we reason that we’ve stopped having that magical intimate connection. “But that’s not the case. The truth is that we change and grow significantly in our adult years, and to stay close with a committed partner, we have to keep learning them, examining if our growth is compatible or divergent. However, we can’t know that until we take action to understand our partner, particularly as they change to the point that we feel we don’t recognize them. If we discover that we can engage and appreciate and value their evolution, that they can reciprocate those feelings for us, we’ve rediscovered intimacy.”

“Intimacy isn’t intuition. It isn’t even familiarity. Intimacy is work. Sometimes it’s happy work, like picking sun-ripened apples that drop effortlessly from the tree, and other times, it’s like foraging for truffle mushrooms—down on your knees, messy, inefficient; it takes digging up dirt and perhaps coming up empty on your first attempt, before you find the mother lode.”

“About that word, fair…the idea of ‘fair’ in a marriage, any relationship, I mean it’s impossible. No marriage is fair. It’s complementary. The idea of ‘fair’ is absurd at best, ableist at worst.” We both swivel our heads and look at her. “Ableist?” Freya asks. “Ableist,” Dr. Dietrich says. “Because saying a relationship has to be ‘fair’ implies only a certain balance and distribution of skills and aptitudes is valid. It upholds an arbitrary, damaging idea of ‘normal’ or ‘standard’ as requisite for fulfilling partnership. When in reality, all you need is two people who love what the other brings and share the work of love and life together.”

Tragedy is built—it has a structure. And if that’s not the ending you want, then you get out of that trajectory. You change the narrative.”

It plays on a loop in my brain. Sometimes it keeps me from sleep. Other times, I wake up and I’ll fixate on that one time I messed up

This bird doesn’t really come with the house, does it? If it does, I feel like someone should have told me an oversize, objectifying parrot lives here. “Dat ass,” it squawks. My eyebrows shoot up. “Excuse me?” Swiveling its head, the parrot lays down a beat, then says, “Pussy tight, hit it right—” Holy shit. I start toward it, not sure exactly what I can do, as it just keeps going. “—Booty slappin’, make it happen—” I clap my hands at it. “You can’t say that here. This is a-a-a family vacation.” The parrot does not care. “Make it cream, pussy supreme, love it, lick it, make me scream!” “Hey!” I’m close enough that the parrot startles at my next clap, then cocks its head before giving me another long whistle. I set my hands on my hips. “Honestly.” “Hey, hot stuff,” it squawks. “Hey yourself,” I say. “No more…of whatever that was, okay?” The parrot ruffles its wings, then spins on the bar, so its back is to me. At least it’s quiet. Turning, I head toward the side of the house that leads to the beach. I’m almost at the door when the parrot says, “Tight-ass,” followed by a cackle. I take the moral high ground and shut the door behind me.

“Romance is about the centrality of loving relationships, and it reminds us that human connection is vital to existence, rather than glorifying egoism or violence or greed. So excuse my genre for not being perfect, but let’s back the fuck up from hypocritically critiquing books that have done a lot more for humanity than slashers and circle-jerk, five-hundred-page, nihilistic tomes.”

They want apologies to wipe away the pain. But pain takes time to heal. You can forgive and hurt as you recover from the wound.

My mother-in-law shifts in her beach chair and smiles over at me. “You’re reading a romance, Aiden?” Freya tips her head and peers up at me. I slap the book shut, caught red-handed—minded?—as a blush heats my cheeks. “Yep. Viggo lent it to me.” Alex, my father-in-law, glances up from his book, too, and squints at the cover. “Ah. Kleypas. She’s good.” My eyebrows lift in surprise. “You’ve read her?” He grins. “I read romance to Elin every night.” She smacks his arm. “You’ll scar them.” “What?” he says. “I said I read to you, not that I—” “Alexander,” Elin says, clasping his jaw and kissing him. “You need a swim. You’re being naughty.” “Am I?” he asks, leaning in for another kiss. Freya drops her head to her book and groans.

He’s shown me strength lies in how openly you bare your heart, not how deeply you guard it.

I’ve learned that the measure of your love isn’t how “okay” you both are or how quickly you hit the curveballs that life throws at you. Love’s true test, the measure of its strength, is its bravery to be honest, its willingness to face the hardest moments and say, Even though there’s nothing to be done, at least I have you.