“But I had become a different person. One who looked at things in a new way. I appreciated life a whole lot more than I had last year.”

“Yet I knew this was one of those experiences for me that made you grow as a person. This was one of those times that made you put things in perspective and appreciate everything you had.”

“I wrote: 'Do you really not believe in love?'I really wished I never would have asked.'No', she had written back. 'I believe people become infatuated; maybe they even really like each other. But I don't believe in love. Those kinds of feelings just don't last. You feel them for a while, maybe even a few years, but eventually the feeling goes away.”

“There was a lot about my life that was crappy, now that I couldn't talk. But if I hadn't gotten drunk that night, if I hadn't gotten in that accident, would I have ever had this moment? Lying there in the sun, holding Sam's hand like time didn't exist and the real world couldn't touch us? Somehow I didn't think so.”

“West had woken up something inside of me. I never felt more alive than I did when I was with West. West pushed me to be more. More human and yet more cybernetic at the same time. West could go anywhere with me. He could nearly match me step for step on scouting duties, could hunt with me. But I still didnt fully trust him. West kept too many secrets, had lied to me too many times. And he almost seemed to like to make me angry.”

“It would have been really easy to spiral down into drugs or alcohol that year, for both of us. But instead we were there, together. We’d taken all the bad things that had happened to us and turned them around into something good and bigger than the two of us.”

“It would be so much easier if I didnt have to make either choice. Picking neither and going back to the way I was just a few months previous would have been so much simpler. But something inside me had changed. There was no going back now. I couldnt live the same without them.”