I had never been this mad at her before. It was one thing to be attacked by someone you hated, but this was something else. This was the kind of hurt that could only be inflicted by someone you loved, who you thought loved you. It was sort of like being stabbed from the inside out.

The ways I could hurt her and hurt myself. Those two things were intertwined somehow. It's hard to explain, but when you were as closed off as I was the past few months, opening felt as wrong as stripping naked in church.

You couldn't unburn the books. You could only buy new ones.

Lena Smoothed her hair. "Crazy weather you have down here.

They shouldn't call death passing on. They should call it leveling up. Because the game only got harder once I lost. And I was more than a little worried it had only just begun.

It was all so clear now. Like everything had been lost in darkness, and then the sun came out. Some moments are like that.

I loved her, atom by atom, one burning cell at a time.