“I was falling apart, and all my pieces were scattering to the wind.”

“Dead end after dead end. Did you find the answers you were looking for in that book?”“I haven’t had a chance to read it yet,” I said nonchalantly.A half-smile tugged at Noah’s mouth. “You fell asleep, didn’t you?”I lifted my chin. “No.”“What page?”“I didn’t fall asleep.”“What page?”Busted. “Six,”

“If I were to live a thousand years, I would belong to you for all of them. If we were to live a thousand lives, I would want to make you mine in each one.”

“In my rush, I hadn’t tied my shoelaces. Noah was now tying them for me. He looked up at me through his dark fringe of lashes and smiled. The expression on his face melted me completely. I knew I had the goofiest grin plastered on my lips, and didn’t care. “There,” he said as he finished tying the laces on my left shoe. “Now you won’t fall.”Too late.”

“My chest cracked open at his words. I stared into Noah's perfect face and tried to see what he saw. I tried to see us - not individually, not the arrogant, beautiful, reckless lost boy and the angry, broken girl - but what we were, who we were, together. I tried to remember holding his hand at my kitchen table and feeling for the first time since I'd left Rhode Island that I wasn't alone in this. That I belonged.”

“I rested my head on my arms and sighed dramatically. "What's up?" she asked"Why are boys so annoying?" she chuckled."You know what my mother used to say?" I shook my head still in position "Boys are stupid and girls are trouble" truer words were never spoken.”

“Noah shifted on the bed, and the oddest crunching sound came underneath him. I looked, really looked, at the bed for the first time."What," I asked slowly, as I eyed the animal crackers strewn all over it, "the hell?""You were convinced they were your pets," Noah said, not even trying to suppress his laughter. "You wouldn't let me touch them.”