How-how can we make it against the whole world?

And the very important fact that I'm here to worry with you and go through all of this - every little bit of it - by your side, even your worst-case-scenario, should it somehow come to that. You wouldn't be doing any of it alone.' Her voice drops and she looks down at our hands, fingers entwined, resting on her lap. 'Whatever happens, there will always be us.

The words fire from my mouth like bullets, ricocheting off the walls before I can even register what I'm saying.

At what point does a fly give up trying to escape through a closed window – do its survival instincts keep it going until it is physically capable of no more, or does it eventually learn after one crash too many that there is no way out? At what point do you decide that enough is enough?

Lochie. The boy I once loved. The boy I still love. The boy I will continue to love, even when my part in this world is over too.

I would give anything to escape myself, Flynn thought, just for a day, just for a minute even. Just to know what it was like to think differently, to feel differently, and to not be me.

Time has stopped; time is racing. Lochie's lips are rough yet smooth, hard yet gentle. His fingers are strong: I feel them in my hair and on my neck and down my arms and against my back. And I never want him to let me go.