Hannah Nicole Maehrer

She was afraid, but she knew now: fear usually meant you were standing on the edge of something new, something self-altering, something potentially good. Fear was not something she would shy away from ever again.

It shouldn’t have surprised him that none of that had fazed her, that it had utterly failed against her impenetrable ability to spin the ugly into something not only amusing, but worth loving.

“Sometimes family isn’t a thing we are born into but a choice we make. Sometimes”—Evie smiled—“the people who love you most in your life are the ones who choose you.”