I could still smell her on my fur. It clung to me, a memory of another world. I was drunk with it, with the scent of her. I'd got too close. The smell of summer on her skin, the half-recalled cadence of her voice, the sensation of her fingers on my fur. Every bit of me sang with the memory of her closeness. Too close. I couldn't stay away.

She doesn't know any better, what a girl like her needs is a man with both his legs on the land. A man who will hold her down so that she doesn't fly away. She doesn't know yet that someone like you looks better on the shelf than in your hand.

His heart hurt with the wanting of it, the hurt no less painful for being difficult to explain.

I was wild and tame and pulled into shreds and crushed into being all at once.

From Ronan's room, he heard Noah's laugh. He and Ronan were throwing various objects from the second-story window to the parking low below. There was a terrific crash. Ronan's voice rose, exasperated. "Not that one, Noah.

Do you think I just turn my secrets out for everyone?" He is unfazed. "I didn't know they were secrets," he says. "Or I wouldn't have asked.

Not dead-dying. Funny how two things could be so similar and yet so far apart