“They could steam up windows with their kisses, but as soon as they started usingtheir mouths for other things—like talking—everything got so complicated.”

“They're just talking. They're flirting kind of like they're strangers, but at the same time they also seem to know each other really well. I don't get it.""So they're taking it slow. What's wrong with that?" Bill asked. "Kids today, they just want things to go fast-- boom boom BOOM.”

“She liked the way he smelled - kind of free and open, like driving with the windows down at night.”

“And the way he looked at her was so intense, his big green eyes probing into her, like he approved of everything she held inside.”

“People are here because they've got baggage. I'm talking curbside-check-in, pay-the-fine-'cause-it's-over-fifty-pounds kind of baggage. Get it?”

“Do you ever feel like 'nothing' has happened to you? Like you know you have a destiny, but all you've seen of life so far is unexceptional? I want my life to be different. I want to feel that it's begun. I'm waiting for 'that' kiss.”

“She saw Daniel hovering over her in his simple peasant's clothes...but then, a moment later, he was bare-chested, with long blond hair...and suddenly he wore a knight's helmet, whose visor he lifted to kiss her lips...but before he did,he shifted into his present self, the Daniel she'd left in her parents' backyard in Thunderbolt when she stepped through into time.This was the Daniel, she realized, she'd been looking for all along. She reached for him,she called his name, but then he changed again. And again. She saw more Daniels than she'd ever thought possible,each one more gorgeous than the last.They folded into each other like a vast accordion, each image of him tilting and altering in the light of the sky behind him.The cut of his nose,the line of his jawbone, the tone of his skin,the shape of his lips, all whirled in and out of focus,morphing all the time. Everything changed except his eyes.His violet eyes always stayed the same. They haunted her,hiding something terrible,something she didn't understand. Something she didn't want to understand.Fear?In the visions,the terror in Daniel's eyes was so intense Luce actually wanted to look away from their beauty. What could someone as powerful as Daniel fear?There was only one thing: Luce's dying.She was experiencing a montage of her death over and over and over again. This was what Daniel's eyes looked like, throughout time,just before her life went up in flames. She had seen this fear in him before.She hated it because it always meant their time was over.She saw it now in every one of his faces. The fear flashed from infinite times and places. Suddenly,she knew there was more:He wasn't afraid for her,not because she was walking into the darkness of another death.He didn't fear that it might cause her pain.Daniel was afraid of her."Lu Xin!" his voice cried out to her from the battlefield. She could see him through the haze of visions.He was the only thing coming in clearly-because everything else around her was lit up startingly white.Everything inside her was,too.Was her love of Daniel burning her up? Was it her own passion,not his,that destroyed her every time?"No!" His hand reached out for hers. But it was too late.”