“I wasn’t different from most girls I knew. Well, except the fact I was exponentially better looking, but why beat a dead horse?”

“I was not staring at you,” he told his plate. I leaned over. “Did you hear that, Dingane’s lunch? He was not staring at you.”He looked up at me crossly. “I was not staring at you.”“I never said you were.” “I was merely explaining that Henry was exaggerating. I did not stare at you.”“Okay,” I stated, implying in my tone that he had done just that.“I didn’t. I-I wasn’t.” “I believe you,” I told him“I may have looked at you a few times to make sure you were doing your job.”“Oh, I see then.”“But I certainly wasn’t staring.”“We’ve established that you were not staring.”He breathed deeply a few times, his eyes burning into mine. “Good.”He’d definitely been staring.”

“I-I'm just - I knew you were beautiful, knew it so very well, but it's like I just woke up to the idea. There's something about you now, Soph. You exude something and I can't quite place my finger on it. You practically glow with it. You devastate me," he said, clutching at his heart.”

“Every want I fulfilled and every desire was quenched. I wanted for nothing. Except attention.”

“Men wanted me. They all did, however briefly, but none of them wanted to keep me. That's what I needed. I needed to be owned, loved. BUT NOT BY A MAN. I knew then that I never needed to be kept by a man. What I needed was to love myself, to want to keep myself around. And in that revelation, I knew that if I wanted to keep myself, that a man wanting to keep me would just be a by-product.”

“It was like my body knew instantly that he was mine and that I was his.”

“I'd say she is nothing short of a miracle, son.""I already knew that," I said, a small smile touching my lips.”