There is no such thing as perfect. But even if there was, I would pick you over perfection any day.

As a romance author, I’m supposed to know how to make love out of words, and maybe once, I thought I did. After tonight, however, I don’t think I would know where to begin. It’s easy to fill a page with saccharine dialogue and pretty similes. Yet now it seems that every word of every page I’ve ever written falls terribly and tragically short.

He isn’t afraid to share himself with me. And I’m not ashamed to want every inch of him.

I can’t believe you’re afraid of ghosts.” “Really? I’m afraid of everything: ghosts, germs, vulnerability, the dark, Slender Man, public speaking, earwigs...

Love was more than just a fleeting desire, or a brief glimpse into a fairy tale, or a flash of playful flirtation in her beautiful hazel eyes. It was more than infatuation with a person’s best qualities, or reluctant acceptance of their less appealing traits. Real love meant loving the whole person, in every form, in every state, in every way. It was what transformed the ordinary monotony of everyday life into extraordinary moments of warmth and compassion and joy.

I’m taking it all in and I’m thinking about magic. Not the fairy tale kind of magic or the witchcraft you’d learn at Hogwarts, but the magic that we, as humans, typically tend to overlook. Because it’s everywhere. It exists in everything. It exists in books and in castles, in forests and in mountains. It guards secrets and guides spirits and reassures time and time again that there is more to our existence than we could ever hope to know.

It’s funny. In my fantasies, I’ve cast Daniel as this romantic, heroic figure; my own personal knight in shining armor. When I daydream, I always imagine he’s the one saving me. But here in our silent sanctuary, I realize I want to be the one who rescues him. I want to protect him, comfort him, heal him... I want to love him.

Why do I get the feeling that this story doesn’t have a happy ending?” JT asked.Because stories that result in a haunting rarely do, Kate thought to herself. Someone always dies. Someone is always left behind. Someone is always caught between worlds.

What? You think that just because a woman doesn’t have a heartbeat, she can’t make a man fall in love with her?