“It’s easy to forget all of the bad memories once you’ve found Mr. Right.” Her eyes got that look, and her smile faltered. I cringed. She was thinking of him again. “Then, when you lose him, you still remember the good. And you look for it everywhere, but you can’t find it.”

“He doesn’t say he loves you at all. He doesn’t touch your skin or look into your eyes, and tell you you’re the only girl in the world for him. That he’s been scared to say it because he didn’t want to lose you. He doesn’t tell you he ached for you every minute he was away.”

“What do you think you’ve been doing to me, every day at work? Even before we were together, you teased me relentlessly. And then when we were together, when I knew exactly what I was missing each and every night when I went home to an empty bed, it was even worse.”

“I’m just saying, you could never be with a guy who didn’t fight with you, who didn’t challenge you, and who didn’t try to fight through those walls you have up. That’s why you haven’t dated anybody at all. The guys you hook up with would let you walk all over them, and you’d never respect them at all.”

“Devon stares at him standing there, remembering the only other guy had ever opened a car door for her. Last summer. The sky was bright blue mirroring the water, the sun warm. A perfect day. He had smiled down at her; he'd That Look in his eyes- warm and eager and a little bit vulnerable. When he'd look at her in that way, and smile that tilted smile, her body would tingle with an electric tension that robbed her breath away. That was then. And now? Now she is here.”

“He can still taste you on his lips, smell your scent in his memory, remember when you smiled just for him, and the thought of never having that again is...harrowing. So, he's willing to hurt you because he's focusing on the pain to try to kill everything that you were to him... so that he can survive it.”

“Guys are prey that you hunt, capture, and slaughter. If you don’t have this mindset, you will become the prey… I’ve been the prey once, and I’ll be damned if I let it happen again”