“I had been walking in silence for so long,I had almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.My knees were tired;my toes were beginning to ache.”

“I hadn’t heard her voice in so fucking long. I almost collapsed right there and then, her presence rolling through me, wanting to bring me to my knees like she had before.”

“I had given up my seat before, but this day, I was especially tired. Tired from my work as a seamstress, and tired from the ache in my heart.”

“Hello Rush," she said, breaking the silence. The sound of her voice almost sent me to my knees. God, I'd missed her voice."Blaire," I managed to say, terrified that I'd scare her away just by speaking.”

“Tired from my all-nighter with my friends, I just kept walking, my head bursting with their conversations, the things I had learned-Laura had had to take the morning-after pill-but none were as loud as the conversations I was having with myself in my head. That, I could never switch off. I don’t think I’d ever thought so much, and talked so little, in my life.”

“He didn't have to remember, I remembered. I had bronzed the words. No, they were fragments of bullet, lodged in my heart. Whenever I moved a certain way they ached, so I learned a totally different way, a new walk, except it wasn't really a walk, it was more a permanent limp.”