“It /is/ painful, she flinches involuntarily, but it is Guy who cries out. "I'm sorry! Did I hurt you?! I didn't mean to but..."Willow covers his mouth with her hand. "Only for a second," she assures him. "Only for a second." And she realizes that this is true. Pain has somehow transformed into pleasure, and that pleasure is better than any pain could ever be.”

“Then all at once she turned to me, her face pale, her eyes strangely alight. She said, “Is it possible to love someone so much, that it gives one a pleasure to hurt them? To hurt them by jealousy, I mean, and to hurt myself at the same time. Pleasure and pain, an equal mingling of pleasure and pain, just as an experiment, a rare sensation?”

“She put her hand to cover up her mouth, like somehow by shielding this part of her body she could protect the rest of it from the terrible pain about to come...”

“I didn’t get her cutting at all. She’d done it sporadically, ever since the accident and it scared me each time. She'd try to explain it to me, how she didn't want to die—she just needed to get it out somehow. She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet—physical pain—was the only way to make the internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it.”

“My heart hurt to see her in pain and, for one second, i shut down all emotion. One day, she'd figure out she was too good for a loser like me and when she left, i didn't know how i'd deal with the pain. Hell, she was worth it. I enfolded her into my body once more, kissing the side of her neck.”

“Her heart had grown so familiar to the pain of life without him, that to respond now seemed too large a pleasure she could not endure. If pain was love, then she loved fiercely. Yet knew she could not be near that boy again.”