“If you can’t laugh together in bed, the chances are you are incompatible, anyway. I’d rather hear a girl laugh well than try to turn me on with long, silent, soulful, secret looks. If you can laugh with a woman, everything else falls into place.”

“You dance really well.” “I took ballet lessons.” She tilted her head back to search his face, certain he was joking. “You did not.” “I did. Several of us on the team did. Good for coordination.” Resisting the laugh that bubbled up in her throat, she said, “Somehow I can’t picture you in tights and a tutu.” But he did laugh. “We made sure no one with a camera got within miles of the studio.”

“I love you, asshole."Then Gavin laughed. "Right back at you, dickhead.”

“I've always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they'd still say I'm a dark personality.”

“The actor Richard Burton once wrote an article for the New York Times about his experience playing the role of Winston Churchill in a television drama:"In the course of preparing myself...I realized afresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them virulently. They have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through history.... What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese against British and Anzac prisoners of war, 'We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth? Such simple--minded cravings for revenge leave me with a horrified but reluctant awe for such single--minded and merciless ferocity."--”

“The wise do not argue therefrom, that the desires of the woman, as long as she is young and strong, are not as real and urgent of those of the man.”

“I know.” He leaned in and brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “And you can try and pretend it’s okay. That you’re strong and tough and you don’t need anyone. That you didn’t need her. But that’s all bullshit. I know it, and you know it.”Savannah stared at Cole.“You’re so pushy. I told you my story. Why can’t you leave it alone?”“Have you ever dealt with it?”She’d spent so many years holding it all inside.“I’m here right now, aren’t I? I obviously dealt with my past.”“I’m not talking about surviving it. Yeah, you survived it. But you haven’t let go of it.” He rubbed her arm. “What she did to you mattered. It wasn’t fair.”He was wrong. She was fine. It didn’t matter. She had always shown everyone how strong she was.“Show me how you feel, Peaches.”Her bottom lip trembled. She got up, walked to the window to look outside, staring at the darkness, not really seeing anything but the years falling away, stripping away the cool, confident woman she was now, revealing the scared little girl she once was. She’d vowed to never go back to that place, to never revisit those feelings again, yet here she stood.Cole wrapped his arms around her. She stiffened.“It’s okay to be vulnerable, Savannah, to let someone see you scared.”“I’m not scared. Not anymore.”