It was stealing her breath, imbecile. Go get a towel." -Christophe, Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow

I pulled in a soft breath. My lungs were starving, crying out for air. I lay still, and a cough tickled at the back of my throat. It always happens when you're hiding, a cough, a sneeze, something. It's stupid. The body decides to screw around with you, even though it knows being quiet is the only way it's going to go on living.

There was a hole inside her, and it twisted.

You're my friend, Danny. You understand? There's no debt between friends." Maybe it's just that the debt gets so high you stop counting it.

And you know, I believed him. What girl wouldn't?

And now here he was in my kitchen. Smelling like apple pies and looking at me with a direct seriousness that made him even cuter. The bruising spreading up the side of his face had halted, and under it he was very pretty. Not jock-pretty, or the hurtful kind of pretty that tells you a guy is too busy taking care of his royal self to think about you.

You can't ever stop thinking something quick enough. Something that hurts always gets the knife in too fast for you to slam a lid on it and shove it away.