“She wasn’t crying at all. This was what scared him the most. Where had she locked up the things he’d seen her feeling that day when she heard? She wasn’t that big a girl to hold all of it—to hold her brother’s life and his death inside of her. To hold all his long-limbed raging tidal motion and all the loss of that.”

“She was inexorably in motion, on her way to a fate that would not include him, and though she missed him still, she was conscious that something had shifted inside her since she'd seen him on the vid. Through some unknown agency, the roar of his loss had diminished to a loud rumble, and the waves had spent much of their fury. The hold he'd left inside her was beginning to knit itself closed, and if she squinted, she could see that one day far in the distance, all that would remain of it would be a ragged seam, sensitive to the touch perhaps, but no longer tender.”

“She had to find him. The desperate need to find him swirled around her body with everything she did. It ate into her soul and sometimes she had to hold on to the kitchen counter to stop herself running out into the road and screaming his name. She wanted to be looking for him all the time. She wanted to leave Sammy and Doug and just keep going until she got to the city and then she wanted to knock on every door across the whole of Sydney until she found her son. But maybe he wasn’t even in Sydney anymore.Maybe he wasn’t even in Australia.Where are you, Lockie? Where are you, where are you, where are you?”

“If he licked her there, she'd rob a bank for him. When she felt his tongue glide across her throat, she quivered all over. Mick tightensed his hold on her, and the bastard did it again.”

“Yet she was so sweet. She wasn’t a hard-ass, wasn’t jaded after all that had been done to her. In bed, she was giving and generous. And she smiled a lot. She seemed to enjoy life.Whereas he’d been nothing but a giant pain in the ass, taking for granted everything that had been given to him. He’d had it so easy, while his parents had struggled to give him a good life so all he had to do was go out and live his dream.He and Savannah were as different as night and day. How could she tolerate being around him? He was nothing but a spoiled football player who craved the spotlight. He didn’t deserve to be sharing a bed with her. She needed someone who cared for her, who thought of nothing but her, who’d give up everything just to give her the kind of life she deserved.He sucked in a breath and realized it was time he made some serious life changes. It was time to go all in and stop hesitating about the things he really wanted in his career. In his life.It was time to start taking some chances.”

“Maybe the real problem wasn’t that she had nothing to write about, but that she had too much. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of her finiteness after all, but rather Infinity and how it called her to begin somewhere, anywhere. To begin might be an acceptance that indeed she was some kind of creator, with tremendous powers. It might mean taking people’s lives into her hands–her own life, her friends’, even her father’s or mother’s. And maybe she was afraid they would think she had animated a wandering Frankenstein no one wanted to hold.”