A Love Letter to The Reader

“His love doesn’t bloom. It devours. And I was born to be consumed.”

There’s something about a man who was never meant to be soft.
The ones built of iron and ash—hardened by silence, not softened by it.
They don’t ask for permission to feel. They don’t fumble over affection or lace it in sweetness.
They love like territory. Like ownership. Like war.

And somehow, that’s what makes us feel safe.
Not because they’re good men. But because they are certain. Steady. Violent in their devotion.
We are drawn to them not despite the blood on their hands—but because they don’t pretend to be clean. Because in their cruelty, we are chosen. Fiercely. Unequivocally.

We don’t want kindness.
We want clarity.

We crave the antihero because he reflects what we’re not allowed to say aloud:

That we want to be wanted so badly, it borders on destruction.

That safety doesn’t always look like softness—sometimes it looks like power, like violence with a motive.

Sometimes it looks like a man who doesn’t kneel,

but would still raze cities at your feet.

They call them red flags. We call them plot points. Because we know what we’re getting into—and we open the door anyway.

They say we romanticize monsters, that we glorify toxicity. They question our morals, our sanity, our taste. But they don't see the layers beneath the surface.

They don't see that the villain's actions are not born of malice, but of a twisted form of love—a love that's been shaped by a world that taught him pain before pleasure, control before compassion.

They don't understand that his cruelty is not a reflection of our desires, but a mirror to our own scars. That in his darkness, we find a resonance with our own.

They don't see that for us, the antihero is not a fantasy, but a catharsis. A way to explore the complexities of love, power and redemption in a space that's safe and controlled.

They don't understand that we don't seek to be saved by the villain, but to understand him. To see the humanity in his flaws, the vulnerability in his strength.

They don't see that in loving the villain, we are not condoning his actions, but acknowledging the complexity of human emotion and the capacity for growth and change.

That’s why we read it.
Because sometimes love doesn’t come dressed in comfort.
Sometimes it comes in claws and jagged edges.
Sometimes it holds you too tightly—not to cage you,
but because it never learned how to let go.

They call it obsession.
We call it truth.
Because in this world of diluted affection and halfhearted connections, we would rather be ruined with certainty
than loved with doubt.

So let them judge us.
Let them misunderstand.
They’ve never stood at the edge of something dark and still said yes.

We don’t fear the man who’s lost to the world.
We fear the one who finds his center in us.
Who tastes the rot inside himself and calls it devotion.
Who doesn’t fall in love—he descends into it, dragging us down with him.

We don’t want softness that flakes under pressure.
We want hands that grip like promise, even when they tremble.
We want the ache, the wreckage, the love that looks like ruin.

"Your light appeases my dark, Eve. When we're together I can almost taste whatever good is left in me."
—Dante Santiago, Hearts of Darkness

Because that’s the truth of it, isn’t it? We love them not because they become good, but because, in their darkest moments—they become ours.

This piece is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Catherine Wiltcher—my favorite dark romance author, and an extraordinary voice we lost far too soon.

Her words didn’t just entertain—they carved themselves into the marrow of my soul, awakening emotions I still struggle to name. Dante and Eve will forever hold the keys to my heart, a love story that lives and breathes within me still.

As a writer, Catherine inspired me endlessly. As a reader, she wrecked and remade me.

The ache of knowing we will never again experience something new from her pen is immeasurable. And yet—her brilliance endures. In every line she wrote. In every heart she touched.

Her stories live on. And so does she.