It isn't fair how I doubt him, and I wonder if he'll ever gather that my loss of faith extends further than I'd ever known it would, severing lines of trust and leveling my confidence like a city-flattening tornado.

What will you do with them?" "Redo them in charcoal, probably." "And then?" "Tack them to my bedroom wall." Bedroom wall? "Who wouldn't want to wake up to this?

I had to stop linking every single thing that happened to me with Kennedy. Realization dawned then, that he was still my default. Over the past three years, we’d become each other’s habit. And though he’d broken his habit of me when he walked away, I’d not broken my habit of him. I was still tethering him to my present, to my future. The truth was, he now belonged only to my past, and it was time I began to accept it, as much as it hurt to do so.

I could never be afraid of you.

There's something uncontaminated about her, and I don't even mean sexually or whatever. I mean the way she is, at her core. Like when you wake up and the world has been blanketed by snow overnight, and not a single footstep or tire track has spoiled the untouched perfection of it.

She chews her lip, staring into my eyes. "Okay... Why did you kiss me in Austin?" I laugh softly and she frowns. "Sorry. That one's too easy." My gaze flicks to her mouth and back. "I'd wanted to kiss you ever since Quinton suggested playing spin the bottle, and by that night in your room, I'd run out of willpower to fight it.

When you find yourself about to say something that crosses a line, something that could cause irreparable harm, sometimes the best you can do is just not say that thing.