I suddenly wondered – can you still be Daddy’s little girl if you don’t have a dad anymore?

Loving another person is taking a giant leap of faith. It’s being vulnerable at the most basic level. It’s like taking your heart out of your chest and chucking it off a cliff, hoping that someone is waiting at the bottom with open arms to catch it.

She wasn’t the type to give away her heart, but she had so quickly opened up and given it to me.

Sometimes the most beautiful things in our world stop being so pretty because we see them all the time. But that’s on us to change our perspective and start really seeing again.

There were simply some guys you wanted to hold on to – every memory, every note, every conversation – you longed to keep it all. And that was how I felt when it came to him.

Don’t hold your breath, sweetheart. You’ll die. Guaranteed,” I shouted over my shoulder as I pulled open the screen door with new resolve.

But I’ll bet you money that if you go to our twenty- year high school reunion, you’ll see Dalton and me there. Only then, we will have arrived together, and we’ll be wearing wedding rings.

It was heartbreaking when you recognized that moment when pieces of your reality turned into memories.

I love the smell of the ice... And the cold. The sound the puck makes when it’s sliding across the ice or when hits the net for a goal... as long as it’s our goal. I love the sound of sticks crashing against one another. The sound my skates make when I come to a hard stop. The roar of the crowd. The way I feel when i’m playing. I can do things on this ice that I can’t do anywhere else.

I was meant to land wherever he settled, like the ocean washing seashells onto the shore. Jack was the shell, in constant motion and movement, being tossed around from place to place by the ebb and flow of something more powerful than he. And I was the sand, gripping and holding on to him, comforting his tumble with each push and pull of the tide, yet always constant. When I walked into the waiting.