Why did you say you believed me ?" In profile, he could see both the young woman she was becoming and the little girl he remembered. "Because I trust you.

You know how gossip is. It's the toxic waste of small town

He was thirty-one now, not too old, but old enough to be lonely. He hadn't dated since he'd been back here, hadn't met anyone who remotely interested him. It was his own fault, he knew. There was something that kept a distance between him and any woman who started to get close, something he wasn't sure he could change even if he tried. And sometimes in the moments right before sleep came, he wondered if he was destined to be alone forever.

I have always had an interest in how cultural rituals play into something as unpredictable as romance.

Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can't control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That's what it was like for me. I didn't plan on falling in love with you, and I doubt if you planned on falling in love with me. But once we met, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has happened only once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it.

because the past was always around her and might return at any time. It prowled the world searching for her, and she knew it was growing angrier at every passing day.

In all love stories the theme is love and tragedy, so by writing these types of stories, I have to include tragedy.