“Run, she told herself. Run, you idiot, run.But she didn't. She couldn't. She just... couldn't.”

“Why can't you like me?" he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and electric roil of those cold, black shadows. "Why can't you like me just a little?"She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance.Instead, he kissed her.”

“She's got the kind of ethereal, unselfconscious beauty some young girls possess that breaks your heart. Or theirs.”

“The grief in her green eyes slips then hardens and, for an instant, Pendleton sees the woman she has become and has no right being, not at sixteen.”

“...She'd drawn the moment of her death.No. NO. She'd DRAWN herself to death.”

“I didn't throw the paper away.Maybe I should have.Oh, the things you know in retrospect.”

“But sticking to rules just because they're there does not make them right. You need to learn when the rules should be broken.”