Gail

“Why do you keep looking at me and touching me when you know that I fully understand the price of losing that?” Alexandria whispered. “Why are you ripping me open every day when I’m trying so hard to patch myself closed? It was going to be easy, I was just going to grow up alone and leave. But then you kicked your way into my life and threw your fragile friends in front of me and now I am tearing out pieces of myself to try to figure out how to get back to where I started. I spent months trying to unlearn loving you, trying to forget the strength of your hands and the worlds in your eyes. But there is no part of me left that you have not touched. … Why are you rebuilding the tragedy that built me?” It was a question, and a threat.
Ryann squeezed her eyes tight and said the thing that had hidden behind her teeth for months. “Because I had to. Because I’m selfish. Because I want you more than I care about whether it hurts us or not.”
― K. Ancrum, The Weight of the Stars