“He thought of her often, and he missed the companionship they'd once shared and the friendship that had been the bedrock of their marriage at its best.”

“He did not have anything on him except her thoughts, except the good times he had once shared and the bad times he so desperately wanted to forget.”

“Suddenly, he missed her, their shared history. The way they remained tuned to each other across a room full of people. He's look up and see her green eyes glance at him. Yes. I know. Us. They'd known there was nothing novel about it as far as the world was concerned; they'd known it was only love, which the world had seen billions of times before. Or rather Cheryl had known. He'd never considered it. Having fallen in love with her he'd realised love was what he's been waiting for. The question of what he [i]wanted[/i] out of life had been answered. Whereas Cheryl had space left over. It was one of the differences between them. It was what kept him striving towards her.”

“She'd preferred the uncertainty, if only because it allowed her to remember him the way he used to be. Sometimes, though, she wondered what he felt when he thought of that year they spent together, or if he ever marveled at what they'd shared, or even whether he thought of her at all.”

“Raven had been shunned and abandoned throughout his life. Friends often came and went without a word or worse, they toyed with his emotions and shared his secrets with those he chose to distrust. His loneliness was inevitable and his secrets were damaging enough. Through all of his largely brief but emotionally involved friendships and infatuations, the depression and the darkness of his past, there had been one place to which he could go for solitude—either in thought or in person—and he never shared the knowledge of its existence or its secrets with anyone. That place dwelled within him even all of these years since the summer when he was nine and all that could ever have gone wrong, did.”

“She had been sharing a house with him for a week, and he had not once flirted with her. He had worked with her, asked her opinion, slapped her on the knuckles figuratively speaking when she was on the wrong track, and acknowledged that she was right when she corrected him. Dammit, he had treated her like a human being.”