You know what it is you smell on him, Haven? Testosterone. It's leaking out of his pores.

I rarely dislike people for things they can't change, they usually give me sufficient cause to dislike them for other reasons.

Anyone who had ever read a novel knew that governesses were supposed to be meek and downtrodden.

His quiet certainty made the ground beneath my feet feel solid. Like someday everything might actually be okay.

...it was better to answer, no matter how ineptly, thank to withhold a reply. Because sometimes silence could wound someone nearly as badly as a bullet.

I realized that my kisses with Dane had become a form of punctuation, the quotations or the hasty dash at the end of a conversation

If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.