“Could you ever completely give up on someone that you loved? From her painful experience with Travis, Lily didn’t think so..”

“Nicola had to move closer to Marcus, had to take his hands in hers and hold them over her heart as though she could give hers up for his if it meant she could take away all of the pain he'd had to deal with at such a terribly young age.”

“God, the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life was giving up what he wanted so that the woman heloved could get what she needed.”

“I've hoped for this for so many years, waited for someone to come along whom you could finally love more than your family, someone who would turn you inside-out and toss you off your path,' His mother looked positively gleeful in the face of his misery. 'Someone just like Nicola for you to blow it with.”

“Maybe it was simply that falling in love wasn’t something Lori would ever be able to turn away from, regardless of just how much pain she knew would be coming down the pike. And maybe, just maybe, as long as she never actually confessed to him how she felt, that would make it okay to give in to what she felt for Grayson for one night, beneath the moon, with the smell of wild grass and the ocean all around them...”

“I’m bad at some things.”She raised an eyebrow. “Name one thing.”Making you fall in love with me the way I’ve always been in love with you. You only ever saw the jock while you let those artist assholes chase you. And hurt you.”

“I fell in love with you when you crashed into my fence post and chased after my chickens and fell down in the mud with the pigs. I fell in love with you when you taught everyone in town to line dance. I fell in love with you when you put Mo’s feelings before your own and stayed with her for as long as she needed you.” One fat tear slid down her cheek as he said, “And, most of all, I fell in love with you when you showed me that it was safe to love again. I keep falling in love with you again and again. Just like I’m falling right this second.”