She clenched her fist in his T-shirt, put her other arm around those too-broad, too-real shoulders. When he tried to pull away, she held on tight. Kami felt the surrender in his mind a moment before he laid his face in the curve of her neck. The whole world was so real it hurt. Kami whispered into Jared's hair, "I'm always on your side.

Nothing else ever mattered to me, and you weren’t even real. All I ever wanted was you.

Your timing is amazing," Kami told him. "By which I mean, I am amazed by it.

He was always part of her thoughts, and now that he was real, he was inescapably part of her life, but it was as she had told her mother: saying he was part of her or that they were more than friends sounded like love, but it seemed like loss as well. All the words she knew to describe what he was to her were from love stories and love songs, but those were not words anyone truly meant.

You're weird," Nick grumbled, but he turned his face back to critically examine the new hand. "You're weird," Jamie returned. "As soon as this whole magical war is over, I'm going to make us some friendship bracelets, and we will wear them everywhere because we are best friends." "Drop dead," said Nick, and Jamie looked serenely pleased.

I don't have deal breakers," Alan said. "I look on tempests, and am never shaken.

If you weren’t there, how do you know someone pushed her?” Sergeant Kenn asked. “Well …,” said Jared. “And what were you doing, running through a strange town at night?” “I was jogging?” Jared offered. “Without your shirt or your shoes?” “Uh,” said Jared.