“You really have no idea, do you?”“No idea about what?” “How thoroughly you own me, Nightie Girl,” he said, leaning in to whisper this part in my ear. “And I know I love you enough to want you to have your happy ending.”

“Come on Josie." He leaned closer and whispered in my ear, "I really want you there.""Yeah?" I asked, slamming my locker shut. "And do you always get what you want?""Yes," he said.”

“He whispers to the top of my head. "You have no idea what you do to me.”

“You remember what else I said to you that day in the drawing room,” he said. “I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for either of yours. I would give over my own life for your happiness. I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that. It is unfair to tell you this, I know, when you can do nothing about it.” He took a shuddering breath. “How you must despise me.”

“I have taken exactly what I wanted," he whispered in her ear. "I will have every part of you, until I live with you underneath your skin.”

“My heart belongs to you,' He promised.'Would you have loved me when I was a girl?''I have always loved you. Even before I met you I loved the idea of you.”