“He wasn’t allowed to come with me there—my own rule for thislittle adventure.No more.Good-bye, Aspen.”

“So, Rule Number One, apparently, was that he wasn’t allowed to crack a smile during foreplay. “Got it”

“I knew that, in my whole life, if I married Aspen or someone else, no one would ever make me feel this way. It wasn’t like I made his world better. It was like I was his world. It wasn’t some explosion; it wasn’t fireworks. It was a fire, burning slowly from the inside out.”

“I remembered suddenly that Aspen had always been this way. He sacrificed sleep for me, he risked getting caught out after curfew for me, he scrounged together pennies for me. Aspen's generosity was harder to see because it wasn't as grand as Maxon's, but the heart behind what he gave was so much bigger.”

“I did what I did for my clone, not for my own personal gain. It wasn’t right that he asked it of me, so I asked it of myself.”

“I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn’t come easy for, someone like me.”