Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters, #1)

by Talia Hibbert

Chloe didn’t do well around people like him; confident people, beautiful people, those who smiled easily and were liked by everyone and felt comfortable in their own skin. They reminded her of all the things she wasn’t and all the loved ones who’d left her behind. They made her feel prickly and silly and frosty and foolish, twisting her insides into knots, until all she could do was snap or stammer.

Bliss should be held on to with both hands.

She hadn’t always been like this, a tongue with the tip bitten off, her feelings squashed into a box. But help and concern, even from the people she loved—even when she needed it—had a way of grating. Of building up, or rather, grinding down. Truthfully, guiltily, sometimes simple gratitude tasted like barely sweetened resentment in her mouth. So she didn’t express it at all.

“The thing is, Red . . . some of us have so many marginalizations, we might drown if we let all the little hurts flood in. So there are those, like me, who filter. I think you’ve noticed that I filter a lot. It’s not some inbuilt shield made of money. It’s just something I’m forced to do.”

Pleasure rolled through him the way fire warmed cold hands: slow and intense and so sharp you weren’t quite sure if it hurt, but didn’t mind either way.

So I’m doing it for you because that’s how people should behave; they should fill in each other’s gaps.

“It’s fine. I’ll still eat it. Will you answer me? You don’t have to.” But he would, because he loved her.

“You were hurt, and you reacted. You were in an unhealthy situation in more ways than one, and you panicked and cleansed everything with fire. Don’t dismiss your emotions and your self-protection as just a fucked-up decision. Don’t reduce something so complex and real and important to nothing.”

“Life hurts,” he said fiercely. “It’s unavoidable. But I know the difference between torture and growing pains.”

“I’m the kind of person who hurts. Too much.” “No,” Gigi corrected calmly. “You are a woman who, in a life filled with pain, came here to ask about love.”

Bravery wasn’t an identity so much as a choice.