I feel a strange, fierce squeeze in my heart when I see him, like pride, although there's nothing about Sean that I can take credit for.

She breathed. "This is lovely." It was for Adam, not Gansey, but she saw Gansey glance over his shoulder at her.

As always, there was an all-American war hero look to him, coded in his tousled brown hair, his summer-narrowed hazel eyes, the straight nose that ancient Anglo-Saxons had graciously passed on to him. Everything about him suggested valor and power and a firm handshake.

It was the stop that happened when you made up your mind to confess, but your mouth betrayed you in the end.

He had a carrying, congressional sort of voice, the kind that sounded good saying things like Less of a tax burden on the middle class and Thank you for your donation and Honey, could you bring me my sweater with the duck on it?

He didn't like to see either of the women in his family disappointed; it ruined perfectly good meals.

Then I picked my book back up again and stroked her hair and read to the soundtrack of her breaths.