“This is what it felt like to have a broken heart. It felt less like a cracking down the middle and more like she had swallowed it whole and it sat bruised and bleeding in the pit of her stomach.”

“She'd cried over a broken heart before. She knew what that felt like, and it didn't feel like this. Her heart felt not so much broken as just ... empty. It felt like she was an outline empty in the middle. The outline cried senselessly for the absent middle. The past cried for the present that was nothing.”

“Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.”

“He was the one she was doing all this for, but sometimes she missed him so much it felt like she swallowed broken glass.”

“When she got downstairs, the whole family was in the kitchen, including Lucas. His face lit up like Vegas when he saw her. She automatically went straight to him and sat down, her hopes of a quiet escape ruined by what felt like a knee-jerk reaction. She hadn’t intended to stay for breakfast, but it was almost as if she needed to be near him.”

“It felt like there was a dark spot in my heart. Like a bruise. And it was getting deeper and wider with every lie I told.”