You will always miss her. There will be days - even years from now - when the missing will be so sharp it will take your breath away. But there will be good days, too, months and years of them. In one way or another you'll be searching for her all your life.

Girls like you can't understand," Julia said, and it was true. Ellie had been popular. She didn't know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime.

To those who are here, those who are gone, and those who are lost.

The heat made people crazy. They woke from their damp bedsheets and went in search of a glass of water, surprised to find that when their vision cleared, they were holding instead the gun they kept hidden in the bookcase.

To lose love is a terrible thing. But to turn away from it is unbearable. Will you spend the rest of your life replaying it in your head? Wondering if you walked away too soon or too easily? Or if you'll ever love anyone that deeply again?

A romance novel focuses exclusively on two people falling in love. It can't be about a woman caring for her aging mother or something like that. It can have that element, but it has to be primarily about the male-female relationship.

It was true; always had been. Friendships were like marriages in that way. Routines and patterns were poured early and hardened like cement.