This time of year, I live and breathe the beach. My cheeks feel raw with the wind throwing sand against them. My thighs sting from the friction of the saddle. My arms ache from holding up two thousand pounds of horse. I have forgotten what it is like to be warm and what a full night’s sleep feels like and what my name sounds like spoken instead of shouted across yards of sand. I am so, so alive.

Fate," Blue replied, glowering at her mother, "is a very weighty word to throw around before breakfast.

As I handed her the bag, the old scars on my wrist throbbed with buried memories.

I grew up with boys of all kinds - I have two brothers, and I was in a bagpipe band for several years.

Mum once told Dad that vices are only vices when looked at through the frame of society.

I’m not looking for self-control.

The place smelled like Sam -- or, I guess, he smelled like the store. Like ink and old building and something more leafy than coffee but less interesting than weed. It was all very ... erudite. I felt surrounded by conversations I had no interest in participating in.