I was eleven years old, and I'd lost my mother, and my soul, and the Crucible gave me you.

Simon Snow is still going to die kissing me.
Just not today.

He looks at my face and huffs, exasperated. "Baz, you're actually, literally the only thing I have to lose. So as long as doing gay stuff in public doesn't make you hate me, I don't really care."
"We're just dancing," I say. "That's hardly gay stuff."
"Dancing's well gay," he says. "Even when it isn't two blokes.

But he’s the most familiar thing in this house, and I fall asleep better, listening to Baz breathe, than I have since winter break started.

I think I might kiss him. He's right here. And his lips are hanging open (mouth breather) and his eyes are alive, alive, alive.

How can you be like this?' I whisper. 'How can you even trust me, after everything?' 'I'm not sure I do trust you,' he whispers back. He reaches out with his other hand and touches my stomach. I feel it drop to the floor. (My stomach, that is.) 'But...' He shrugs. He's rubbing my stomach, and I close my eyes-because it feels good. (So good.) And also because I want him to kiss me again.