“I wonder why when I told him that my chest still ached even though I had finally told him how I felt, he said, "So you finally realize how I've felt these past three years?" and laughed.”

“I had wondered a million times how I could possibly go on living when my heart was gone? How was it possible that it still beat in my chest when it felt so empty?”

“Yet you told him you loved him?""Yes, I did."Bridgid was clearly impressed. "You're more courageous than I am. The fear of being rejected pains me to even think about, yet you boldly told Brodick how you felt, even though he hadn't spoken his feelings.""Actually, he told me I loved him.”

“It wasn't what you said", he told her."It was how I felt when you said it".”

“My brother, who grew up with three sisters, was I won't say how many years old when he finally realized that he did not have to wrap the towel around his chest when he came out of the shower.”

“I had to stop linking every single thing that happened to me with Kennedy. Realization dawned then, that he was still my default. Over the past three years, we’d become each other’s habit. And though he’d broken his habit of me when he walked away, I’d not broken my habit of him. I was still tethering him to my present, to my future. The truth was, he now belonged only to my past, and it was time I began to accept it, as much as it hurt to do so.”