Hormones, it seemed, we're making a much-delayed appearance in her life.Liv was horrified.

You can do it now. You can't say you've never dated, because you have. A lot of people, actually.” Xander's gave her a mischievous grin. “You've leveled up, dearest. You're an expert on dating compared to Liv of six months ago.

She was in his arms. Laurent’s arms! He spun her around and set her back down again in the space of three seconds, then stepped back and slid his hands into his pockets. His face looked flushed under his tan, but she was still reeling from being touched, her mind pulling in a hundred different directions at once. Laurent smelled good. He felt good. He was so unbelievably beyond her level. Oh my God... I’m totally falling for him.

Although she appreciated her father’s not-so-subtle efforts to nudge her toward social normalcy, she wasn’t entirely sure she could. Not when the deck was stacked so decidedly against them. Did she want to set herself up for relationship failure?

Cole didn’t see her for the rest of the weekend, and he was glad.She wasn’t in class on Monday either. That made it easier.Tuesday she was still missing.

When someone’s sick and not getting better, people give you all types of crap. They tell you things’ll be fine because they want to believe it themselves. But the truth I’ve found is that you just have to learn to keep going despite the pain.

And then they half-ran, half-skipped the last eight blocks to her apartment, their bodies connected by their crossed arms. Half a block away, their combined shadow looked like the wings of a single sea bird, wheeling in a bright sky. Two blocks further, and they looked like two boats, alone on an endless ocean. One block from that, and their joined bodies merged into a symbol of infinity.

No, I’m serious,” he insisted, matching her pace perfectly. “Someone you’ve never met before… but it seems like you have.”Ava slowed slightly and he followed without dropping her eyes.“Like you...” Ava answered.She intended for it to be a question, but it came out as a statement instead, because this was part of what unsettled her about Cole Thomas. The feeling that she knew him somehow, or had known him at some point… and that there was something more to it.

Breathtaking.That was the word, Liv decided, which had convinced her to wear the ludicrous outfit, because no one - not the one, solitary boyfriend she'd had during high school, or the leering frat boys she avoided at college parties - had ever spoken to her with such reverence. And with Xander beaming down at her, she did feel beautiful.