“You look like something rare and wild,” he whispers, pushing the hair back from my cheek. My breath catches at the feel of his fingers on my skin. “Something they locked up in a cage. And I think you were so relieved to find a safe place to land you didn’t even realize it happened. I thought I could save you if I came here this summer, but even if someone opens the cage, you’ve got to be willing to fly away, too, Jules.”

“I thought I was going to die, and the only thing that mattered, the only thing I wanted, was you,” he says against my mouth. “You were all I fucking thought about.”

“You’re something wild and magnificent, and he has no idea how to take care of you, so he spends all his time making sure your cage is secure because he has no idea what else to do. And that’s why this kills me, Juliet. Because I think I do know how to take care of you, and I want to take his place so bad that it fucking hurts to look at you sometimes.”

“I haven’t loved many things in this world,” he says, “but I loved you from the minute I saw you, and whether it’s today or seventy years from now, I’ll love you with my dying breath.”

“Choose me, Juliet,” he whispers. “Please fucking choose me.”

People are the thing that will grind your trust down to nothing. But they’re also how you to discover a small seed of something inside yourself again, something soft and hopeful and full of love, something that will grow.