“There was a lot of pain in that kiss. There was so much hurt and so much fear in it. I felt tears rolling down the both of our faces. But, in that kiss, there was even more want. We both wanted to smother out that pain, to not have so many horrible things in the all too recent past, to just be normal, to do the types of things we were supposed to be dealing with besides death and disability.”

“You cant have both.Avian was right. Even though I didnt know how to handle feeling like this, I knew what I had been doing was wrong. I couldn't have both. It was unfair to both of them. And it was tearing me into two people. But how was I supposed to choose? I felt a tie to both of them, a tie so solid I wasnt sure that even I was strong enough to sever it.”

“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.”

“I've always thought it would be nice to have the house to myself for a while. This place gets so loud all theme and there are always so many people in it. But I guess I'm grateful for all the noise and chaos. I don't know if I want to be alone in the quiet with my thoughts these days.”

“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.”

“Some days I miss flying so much it makes my entire chest hurt, feels like I can't breathe sometimes. I try not to think about the fact that I'll never have thousands of feet of air between me and the ground again. But it's those times that I have to remind myself that at least I got the chance to do it sometime in my life. A couple dozen solo flights are better than having never done it at all.”

“Avian was home and made me feel secure and right. Everything felt okay when I was with Avian. But at the same time, he was still so much older than I was. And he would be tied to Eden in such a permanent way.”