She doesn't know any better, what a girl like her needs is a man with both his legs on the land. A man who will hold her down so that she doesn't fly away. She doesn't know yet that someone like you looks better on the shelf than in your hand.

I say, 'I will not be your weakness, Sean Kendrick.'
Now he looks at me. He says, very softly, 'It's late for that, Puck.

I whisper like the sea in the horse's ear.

Sean reaches between us and slides a thin bracelet of red ribbons over my free hand. Lifting my arm, he presses his lips against the inside of my wrist. I'm utterly still; I feel my pulse tap several times against his lips, and then he releases my hand.
"For luck," he says. He takes Dove's lead from me.
"Sean," I say, and he turns. I take his chin and kiss his lips, hard. I'm reminded, all of a sudden, of that first day on the beach, when I pulled his head from the water.
"For luck," I say to his startled face.

I was wild and tame and pulled into shreds and crushed into being all at once.

People shouldn't have to earn kindness. They should have to earn cruelty.