Good things, by their nature, are fleeting. It’s those that bring us grief that linger.

Sometimes when things break, you can hold them together for a while with string or glue or tape. Sometimes, nothing will hold what’s broken, and the pieces fly all over, and though you think you might be able to find them all again, one or two will always be missing. I flew apart. I broke. I shattered like a crystal vase dropped on a concrete floor, and pieces of me scattered all over. Some of them I was glad to see go. Some I never wanted to see again.

He was quiet. I said nothing, hoping that maybe, for once, he'd stop pretenting he was okay. Then I could, too. That we could both forget the roles that had so long bound us.

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.

I didn’t fall in love with James. Falling sounds like an accident. Falling hurts. I’d fallen in love with Michael, fallen hard like slipping off a cliff and hitting the rocks below. Falling in love was something I’d vowed never to do again. I chose to love James.

I've been hit on plenty of times, mostly by men with little finesse who thought what was between their legs made up for what they lacked between their ears.

You never fall in love with anyone the same way you fell in love with someone else. It's always different, every time, if you're lucky-or cursed-enough to have it happen more than once. But I've never been uncertain about love, not any of the times I found myself in it. Love is always real, even when it doesn't last.