I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending

You don't have to say I love you to say I love you," you said with a shrug. "All you have to do is say my name and I know." ..."Can't you hear it?" you said. "When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it's safe inside your mouth.

You can't look back - you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.

There was a fine line between love and hate you heard that cliche all the time. But no one told you that the moment you crossed it would be the one you least expected. You'd fall in love and crack open a secret door to let your soul mate in. You just never expected such closeness one day to feel like an intrusion.

Or in other words, it's the substance you've got when you start that determines the outcome.

I think you can love a person too much. You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else.

I felt a splinter of guilt wedge into my heart. Charlotte had hurt me; in return, I'd hurt Rob. Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late we've wounded the people we're trying to protect.