The only reason I left was to protect you.

The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under. I did not resurface.

I felt like I was staring out across an ocean that I was going to have to swim from shore to shore before I could rest again.

I coveted you. I had no right to want you--but I reached out and took you anyway. And now look what's become of you! Trying to seduce a vampire.

When you can’t be with the one you love, will you stay with the one who loves you?

I struggled to find the words to name the feelings that flooded through me, but I had no words strong enough to hold them. For a long moment, I drowned in them. When I surfaced, I was not the same man I had been. My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my midnight?

Your number was up the first time I met you.