“She hated that she was still so desperate for a glimpse of him, but it had been this way for years.”

“Like punch through the brick wall he’d built around himself and give in to the sudden, desperate urges to touch, to taste, to feel. Krista Fucking Slater. Of all the women in the world, why was she the only one who managed to remind him he was still alive in a way no one had been able to in three long years?”

“She had worked a year to get him out of her life as much as she possibly could. He always had a place in her heart since she had loved him so obsessively for such a long time, but she had been able to extract herself from him to an extent.”

“She isn't the girl who used to live next door, hasn't been for years. Back then she had freckles and jeans with holes at the knees and a ponytail yanked so tight it made her eyes pull at the corners. Now she wears pantyhose and tailored suits; she has had the same short bob hairstyle for five years. But when Patrick gets close enough, she still smells like childhood to him.”

“For although she had been, and still was, very much admired, she had got into the way of preferring unsatisfactory love affairs to any others, so that it was becoming almost a bad habit.”

“She had been born for this man, and she had spent so many years trying to accept the fact that he had been born for someone else...”