He put my fingertips to his mouth and kissed them. Licked the trace of blood away. Made them clean. Then I knew the truth I had been denying. He made me clean. Dan made me clean and shining and bright. He made me beautiful, and I did not want to lose him.

The past doesn't change no matter how much time you spend thinking about it. Good and bad all add up to the whole. Take away one piece, no matter how small, and the whole changes. Whether it's optimism, pessimism or fatalism, I don't spend my time wishing for the past to be different so present would be different, too. I control my future with what I choose now.

Choices. We all make them, sometimes more than once. Sometimes it's the choices we make over and over that define us, but more often it's the choices we don't make.

But the problem with looking back when you should be walking ahead is that you usually end up walking into something that hurts.

I've done my best to drive you away, Sadie," he said suddenly. "But you've never left me.

From the first time you laughed with me, all those months, and all those stories,” Joe said quietly. “They were all you, to me. All of them were you.

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.