I have a crush on your mind, I fell for your personality and your looks are just a big bonus.

She wanted something else, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second.

I'll be the light in the window.

I breathe deeply, taking in the fresh spring air. Though Beaufort has changed and I have changed, the air itself has not. It’s still the air of my childhood, the air of my seventeenth year, and when I finally exhale, I’m fifty-seven once more. But this is okay. I smile slightly, looking towards the sky, knowing there’s one thing I haven’t told you: I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen.

Before we met, I was as lost as a person could be and yet you saw something in me that somehow gave me direction again.

It's strange, I think, the way our lives turn out. Moments of circumstance, when later combined with conscious decisions and actions and a boatload of hope, can eventually forge a future that seems predestined.

I don't want to live the rest of my life thinking about you and dreaming of what might have been. Stay with me, Allie.