“I went into the hall and looked out the front window for the twentienth time and told myself to relax for the fiftieth. It could not be healthy, this breathless, silly, heart-pounding state I'd been in since I'd called him back and left a message and he'd called me back and I'd been convinced he could hear my heartbeat through the phone. All so I could run around my room like a hamster on crack, tripping over discarded jeans and trying to figure out where I'd dropped yesterday's bra.”

“I'd convinced myself it would have been different if he'd been as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside, but he wasn't. He was cruel beauty, a sculpture, a god, and I couldn't tear my eyes from him. I'd seen his expression soften in the dungeon with the whip. I'd do anything to have him look at me like that again, no matter how insane he was.”

“I sunk down onto the bench in the middle of the car. So Alex had loved me the whole time, from the moment we'd seen each other again? All that time I'd been freaking out about Rachel? All that time I'd spent inches away from him, sleeping in his bed by myself; sitting opposite him at dinner, smashing plates; clinging to him on the back of his bike; sneaking peeks at him through a half-ajar bathroom door - and all the time he'd been in love with me? We'd wasted all that time when we could have been kissing? And he'd had to wait until two seconds before leaving me until he told me? If the Unit didn't kill him, I was going to.”

“As it was, I couldn't escape the feeling that I was out of my element. I found myself thinking of a book I'd left half-read at home and wishing I'd stuck it in my purse so I could pull it out now.”

“I was trying to have an insight, and all I could think of was that I'd backed myself into a corner, and the corner was me.”

“I'd never forgotten him, despite spending half my life trying to forget him. I'd given him everything: my love, my body, my pride, & parts of my heart & mind that I could never get back.”