It's an incredible thing, how you can feel so taken care of by someone and yet feel, also, like you would die or do anything just for the chance to protect him back.

it seemed a lifetime ago i'd lain in bed with Lena and felt her breath tickling my chin and held her while she slept, felt her heart beating through her skin to mine. it was a lifetime ago. everything was different.

The first one, we’ll name Blue.

Nothing has ever been so painful or delicious as being so close to him and being unable to do anything about it: like eating ice cream so fast on a hot day you get a splitting headache.

I remember a story I once heard about drowning: that when you fall into cold water it's not that you drown right away but that the cold disorients you and makes you think that down is up and up is down, so you may be swimming, swimming, swimming for your life in the wrong direction, all the way toward the bottom until you sink. That's how I feel, as though everything has been turned around.

That's all I want. Just you and me. Always.

But from the beginning, I knew that in a world where destiny was dead, I was destined, forever, to love him. Even though he didn't - though he couldn't - ever love me back.