“She loved him. It was a pale description of how she felt, but she could find no other words. To watch him, to hear him, to simply be in the same space with him made her heart sing.”

“She had told him that she loved him. He had known that, but hearing it in the traditional phrase had affected him in new and blinding ways.Ways that made him believe that he could do anything.Anything she needed or wanted him to do. Because her loving him meant so much more than him loving her.”

“...Again she did not seem to hear, still looking into Cale’s eyes. Then slowly, hopelessly, she dropped her gaze. “I understand,” she said. It was that, of course, that pierced him as if she had stabbed him through the heart. To him it was the sound of lost faith and it was unendurable. He felt he’d become a kind of god in her eyes, and it was simply impossible to give up her adoration.”

“Whether he loved her or not didn't change how she felt about him. She loved him independent and regardless of whether he loved her.”

“At first, she could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him?”

“and she was so simply his love, his girl, watching him approach as if she were memorizing him and his walk and those flowers and this moment, and he wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could...”