Just a few lines from some books I've read...
...Yeah, they're romance novels. That stuff's so bad for you.
From Elizabeth Lowell's Only Love...
Love is a fairy tale spun to keep women from setting off on their own and leaving men to take care of themselves.
"�Someday a distant sunrise will call to me, promising me everything I've ever wanted and have never been able to name. Then I'll set out again, because there's nothing as grand as the sunrise I haven't seen. Nothing."
I hear your warning, yondering man. Don't try to hold you. Don't dream on you.
"Pregnant or not, I will never marry a man who wants me less than he wants the sunrise he's never seen."
Whip flinched at the conflicting emotions in Shannon's voice, in her eyes, in her hands clenching the blanket over her nakedness.
"But you would have given yourself to me," Whip said, angry for no reason.
A shiver of memory and desire went through Shannon.
"Yes," she said.
"Why?"
"Why do you care?"
"Because I'm afraid you're na�ve enough to believe you love me," Whip said bluntly.
Shannon gave a shuttered glance.
"Either way, it's not your worry," she said. "It's mine."
"I don't want you to love me," Whip said, biting off each word.
"I know."
"Love is a cage."
"Yes. I know that, too. Now. Someday I'll thank you for teaching me how to build a cage of sunlight. But not today."
She put her forehead back on her knees, shutting Whip out.
"Shannon?"
"Go away, yondering man. You don't want my body, you don't want my love, you don't want anything but the sunrise you've never seen. Go chase it and leave me be."
Would we feed off one another until everything was gone but the memory of heat?
�Love is like the sun, burning through darkness�and like the sun, love is always beyond reach. It can no more be caught and held than sunlight itself. Love touches you. you don't touch it.
I won't cry. I knew it was coming. I just didn't think it would be like this. In anger.
It's alright, yondering man. It's alright. You can take me and end the aching and not have to give up the sunrise you've never seen.
"Then why do you keep pushing me away?" Shannon asked raggedly. "I'm not asking you to love me. I'm not begging you to stay with me. I just want�I just want to be alive, really alive before I die. I'm a widow who was never a bride, and if you don't take me, I'll go to my grave without knowing what it is to give myself to the man I love."
"I know you'll leave me, Whip. I've known it from the first time I heard you talking about the sunrise you've never seen. 'Nothing is more beautiful. Nothing is more compelling.' I believed you then. I believe you now. You will leave."
She would have sold her soul to be a distant sunrise calling his name�and to hear him answer.
Nothing could compete with Shannon except the sunrise he hadn't seen-the vast distance calling his name, promising him the freedom of the world and the mysteries of a thousand Edens.
�Each day made it more certain that the pain of parting would be deeper.
I never meant to hurt you, honey girl.
Yet Whip would, and he knew it.
Before now I never guessed how much a man could hurt and never show a wound.
Nor how much a woman could cry and never make a sound.
"I will always love you," Shannon whispered. "Now ride on, my sweet yondering man. Just�ride on."
May God keep you, yondering man�May you someday find what you want.
And may it want you in return.
Do you know what the good thing is about this book? He comes back to her because he realized that she was what he was looking for all his life. And because she loved him enough to let him go, she took him back. *sigh*
� 1997 [email protected]
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