My first impulse is not to grab her or kiss her or yell at her. I simple want to touch her cheek, still flushed from the night's performance. I want to cut through the space that separates us, measured in feet-not miles, not continents, not years-and to take a callused finger to her face.

Traveling is not something you are good at. It is something you do. Like breathing.

If these walls could talk, I wonder what secrets they'd tell.

I am adrenaline slammed into inertia: a fast car stuck in traffic.

I know what I did to you was so wrong, but at the time it also felt so necessary to my survival. I don't know if those two things can both be true, but that's how it was.

You talked to me, but you didn’t. I could see you having these two-sided conversations. The things you wanted to say to me. And the words that actually came out.

I'm also starting to wonder something else. If maybe the point of this crazy quest I'm on wasn't to help me find Willem. Maybe it was to help me find someone else entirely.