“How I should despise such a thing if I were a man. What a nose she has! what a chin! what a neck! Then her eyes--and the worst kissing lips in the universe.”

“She put her arms around his waist and looked up at his face. “I did? What did I take?”He bent down to kiss her. She stood to meethim halfway. His lips softly touched her lips and her neck as his hands became tangled in her hair.“I believe it was my heart.”

“Lincoln closed his eyes. It seemed like the right thing to do, no matter what happened next. He closed his eyes and felt her fingertips touching his cheek, then his forehead, then his eyelids. He took a breath--ink and hand soap."I" -- he heard her whisper, closer than he expected, and shaky and strange -- "think I might be a very stupid girl."He shook his head no. Just barely. So that only someone who was holding his cheek and his neck would notice."Yes," she said, sounding closer. He didn't move, didn't open his eyes. What if he opened his eyes and she saw what she was doing?She kissed his cheek, and he let his head tip forward into her hands. She kissed his other cheek. And his chin. The groove below his bottom lip. "Stupid girl," she said near the corner of his mouth, sounding incredulous, "what could you possibly be thinking?"Lincoln found his mouth. "Perfect girl," he said so quietly that only someone with her hands in his hair and her lips all but touching his could possibly hear. "Pretty girl." He found her mouth. "Perfect." Kiss. "Magic." Kiss. "Only girl.”

“In her writings, she despises her fellow man and woman for representing what she had lost.”

“I kissed her again, tenderly touching my lips to hers. “Now what?”“Kiss the kids, and then you and I can celebrate eleven years of in-your-face-we-made-it. How about that?”

“What were you thinking about? When I came in?""Being Sam," I said."What a nice thing to be," Grace said. And then she smiled, bigger and bigger, until I felt my expression mirror hers, our noses touching.”