He took his mouth from hers and stared down at her with eyes so dark they no longer looked blue. “Amanda, do you trust me?” “Of course not,” she said. “I don’t know the first thing about you.” Laughter rustled from his chest. “Sensible woman.

I was ripe ten years ago. Now I’m merely preserved, and before long I’ll be buried back in the orchard with the other pits.” -Amanda to Jack

And I wonder how Gage knew this is what my soul has craved. He turns me to face him, his eyes searching. It occurs to me that no one in my life has ever concerned himself so thoroughly with my happiness.

But when you started dating someone, you could never be sure what you were getting into. You had to give someone a chance to show you who he really was . . . and believe him when he did.

She heard the trace of fear in his voice. The fear that a small boy must have felt when every woman he loved had disappeared from his life, swept away by a merciless fever. She didn’t know how to reassure him, or how to console his long-ago grief.

It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep...a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis.

I grew up being very shy, very much a bookworm, and I remember desperately wondering how to be accepted by the popular kids.