Cole sat back up, slowly, and I opened my eyes. His expression, as ever, was blank, the face he wore when something mattered. He said, "That's how I would kiss you, if I loved you.

Come on," Cole said. He looked back over his shoulder at Mr. Brisbane, who was looking at me with a complicated expression as I left. Cole pointed at him and said, "You're a son of a bitch. He belongs here more than you do.

Avoiding a bathtub because your parents tried to kill you in one isn't the same as avoiding your entire life by becoming a wolf.

Aren't you afraid?''Of what?''Of losing yourself.''That's what I'm hoping for.

You're not that girl,' Cole said, sounding tired. 'Trust me, I've seen enough of them to know. Look. Don't cry. You're not that girl either.' 'Oh yeah? What girl am I?''I'll let you know when I figure it out. Just don't cry.

The entire room was so yellow that it looked like the sun had thrown up on the walls and wiped its mouth afterward on the dresser and curtains.---Cole

Oh my God. What in—”I was going to be killed by two generations of beautiful women. While naked.“Mom,” Isabel snapped, interrupting. “Do you mind not staring? It’s totally perv.

I felt a tickle on my skin; it took me a moment to realize that Cole was driving his die-cast Mustang up my arm. He was laughing to himself, hushed and infectious, as if there was still any reason to be quite.

What a strange world this was, that I could come here to lose everything about myself, and instead lose everything but me. It was possible that I’d thrown one too many Molotov cocktails over God’s fence. It would be, after all, a divinely ironic punishment to watch me learn to care and then destroy the things I cared about.