You'd be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you'd do, when you take self-respect out of the equation.

To think, after all this time, after all the searching and all the waiting, after all the regret and the time she'd spent away, she came back to find that happiness was right where she's left it. On a football field in Mullaby, North Carolina. Waiting for her.

Living down your own past was hard enough. You shouldn't have to live down someone else's.

But that would leave Paxton to fend for herself, and the last thing any woman wanted in this kind of situation was to look around and see all the people who could help her doing nothing.

He was the only person in the world she was tongue-tied around, and yet the only person she really wanted to talk to.

There was an art to the male posterior. That's all there was to it.

I spent so much time telling myself that this wasn't home that I started to believe it," she said carefully. "Belonging has always been tough for me." I can be your home," he said quietly. "Belong to me.