“But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn’t dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I’d managed my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I’d been in years.”

“It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that I’d stumbled across the kind of man I used to find irresistible, or that he’d managed to stare right inside my brain to locate my weaknesses. The thrill of being wanted while pretending not to be interested was a game I’d played over and over during my youth. I’d grown up since then. I’d done more than my share of getting mixed up with men who were all ego and muscles, and he reminded me exactly why I’d given them up. Unfortunately, my body hadn’t got the memo yet.”

“but I felt as if I’d just been Photoshopped out of my own book cover. And if there was one thing I wasn’t used to, it was being ignored”

“If I’d been there, I might have been able to do something. But I wasn’t, and I lost them.”“And if you’d been there,” Ty said softly, “I would have lost you.”

“What a twisted, twisted place, I think in retrospect… and yet when it was all happening back then, and for many days after I emerged, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps it had actually been the straightest place I’d ever visited.”

“If my name were Isaac Newton, would I be a famous no name? I’d have worldwide and historical name recognition, yet I’d be anonymous.”