If you want to know how someone really feels, you almost never have to ask.

I waited for a long time and there was nothing but the pain of wanting something I couldn't seem to find.

He hadn’t been her first lover or the first boy to give her an orgasm. He hadn’t even been the first she’d loved. He’d been the first to turn her inside out with something as simple as a smile. The first to make her doubt herself. He’d taken her deeper than anyone ever had, and yet she hadn’t drowned.

I do not like that I allowed my past to close me off. I do not like that I let circumstances rob me of the ability to have a normal relationship with a man, to have friends, to be happy. I do not like it, but I had felt myself powerless against it.

There seemed to be so much to say, but no words adequate to say it.

This is the truth. I have been in love. I have been in lust. I’ve made good choices and bad ones, I have been smart and I’ve been stupid. But I have never in my life felt the way I do now, here, with Will.

Sometimes,” Joe said after a bit, “it’s just easier to keep being what everyone expects you to be. Even if that’s what you’re not, anymore.