Rebecca Hamilton

“This—” He shook his head. “You and me, you know it’s not a good idea.”“If you think so, maybe you should stay away.”“You don’t want me to,” he said, moving his hand to mine. Every time he touched me, my stomach got all jittery.“What do you want?” I asked.“You,” he said, his expression unreadable and his voice heavy and full of . . . full of what? Sadness? Regret? “To understandyou. To know that you’re safe. To not have to avoid the only person I can be myself around.”

“Eat breakfast, find a better job, get rid of the damn voices. Now if all I had to do was wiggle my nose for that to happen. Alas, I was no Samantha.”

“I’ve stopped protecting my heart from you,” he said. “I’ve stopped fighting the way I feel, stopped fighting the natural draw I feel toward you. Now you need to do the same.”

“Faith, Sophia. Life isn’t always going to give you the answers to the questions you’re asking. Sometimes you have to make do with the answers you get.”

“You're not so interesting that I came to watch you sleep, darlin”

“The Cruor are the reality from which legends of vampires arose.”

“Do you always assume the worst of people? Or is it yourself you think so poorly of? Perhaps you might consider life is complicated enough without your helping things along.”

“Believe me, darlin’, I’d prefer to not run into you quite so much. It doesn’t bode well of your sensibilities.”

“I must be pretty special to have followed you here but arrived first.”

“Be true in love, this you must do, unless your love is false to you. With these words, the Rede fulfill: An it harm none, do what ye will.”

“I practiced indoors, fully-clothed, using only an open window to connect with nature. Not a single animal sacrifice, either. I hadn’t even been able to evict the raccoon family that spent last winter in my attic.”

“As bland as oatmeal, yet somehow I'd become the rumor mill's hot sauce.”