“We've got time," Jared says again.An abrupt panic, like a warning premonition, makes it impossible for me to speak for a moment. He watches the change on my face with worried eyes. "You don't know that." The despair that softened when he found me strikes like the lash of a whip. "You can't know how much time we'll have. You don't know if we should be counting in months or days or hours."He laughs a warm laugh, touching his lips to the tense place where my eyebrows pull together. "Don't worry, Mel. Miracles don't work that way. I'll never lose you. I'll never let you get away from me."She brought me back to the present - to the thin ribbon of the highway winding through the Arizona wasteland, baking under the fierce noon sun - without my choosing to return. I stared at the empty place ahead and felt the empty place inside. Her thought sighed faintly in my head: you never know how much time you'll have.The tears I was crying belonged to both of us.”

“Don't worry, Mel. Miracles don't work that way. I'll never lose you. I'll never let you get away from me.”

“I don't know if Marcus knows how important that moment was to me. How much he actually saved me from myself, from absolute despair. Maybe he does know and that's exactly what he was doing. He was like an angel who came into my life with his bus of books at exactly the right time, who whisked me away from a terrible place to a faraway land.”

“Do you know what it was like kissing Holly and looking up to see you?""What?""You said to begin anywhere."But I hadn't expected that as a beginning, middle or end. I felt my cheeks getting warm. "I guess it was pretty embarrassing for both of us," I said, and walked ahead of him so he wouldn't see my face. "I know, I just kept staring at you.""What were you thinking?""I don't remember.""Don't you start using that line," he chided."Then don't ask me, Nick." Did he suspect how I felt.He caught me and turned me around to face him. I focused on his shirt. "Okay," he said quietly, "I'll tell you what I was thinking. I couldn't believe that I, who was never going to get hooked, had fallen in love with a girl who didn't want to date, and she was watching me kiss somebody else."I glanced up."Your turn, brave girl. What were you thinking?""That Holly looked beautiful in your arms and that you didn't pull away from her the way you had pulled away from me when I kissed you."He drew me to him. "I'm not pulling away again," he said holding me close.”

“I'll find you, don't worry. My body won't be with you all the time, but you'll always have my heart. I'm your worrier, remember?" "I'll never forget. I promise. I'm your High Priestess and you've pledged yourself to me. That means you have my heart, too.""Then both of us better stay safe. A heart's a hard thing to live without. I should know. I've tried it.”

“Jared gently pulled my chin to face him. "He said he wouldn't make you choose. But if you don't have a choice, I'm the one that loses. So I'm going to make you choose, Nina. Choose me. Please...choose me." He shook his head. "I can't live without you.”