“Is there anything better than iced coffee and a bookstore on a sunny day? I mean, aside from hot coffee and a bookstore on a rainy day.”

“Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either. Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt. No matter where we go, our love will stretch out to hold us, and that makes me feel like … like everything will be okay.”

“Nora.” He just barely smiles. “You’re in books. Of course you don’t have a life. None of us do. There’s always something too good to read.”

“The last-page ache. The deep breath in after you’ve set the book aside.”

“That’s the thing about women. There’s no good way to be one. Wear your emotions on your sleeve and you’re hysterical. Keep them tucked away where your boyfriend doesn’t have to tend to them and you’re a heartless bitch.”

“Sometimes, even when you start with the last page and you think you know everything, a book finds a way to surprise you.”

“If I had to pick one person to be in my corner, it’d be you. Every time.”

“That’s life. You’re always making decisions, taking paths that lead you away from the rest before you can see where they end. Maybe that’s why we as a species love stories so much. All those chances for do-overs, opportunities to live the lives we’ll never have.”

“So if you’re the ‘wrong kind of woman,’ then I’m the wrong kind of man.”

“She wonders whether what comes next could ever live up to the expectations. She doesn’t know. You never can. She turns the page anyway.”

“I read once that sunflowers always orient themselves to face the sun. That’s what being near Charlie Lastra is like for me. There could be a raging wildfire racing toward me from the west and I’d still be straining eastward toward his warmth.”

“Those were the endings I found solace in. The ones that said, Yes, you have lost something, but maybe, someday, you’ll find something too.”

“For anyone who wants it all,” she begins, “may you find something that is more than enough.”

“Maybe it’s possible to have more than one home. Maybe it’s possible to belong in a hundred different ways to a hundred different people and places.”

“Just because not everyone gets you doesn't mean you're wrong.”

“I know,” he says. “I can read you like a book.”

“His hands root me through the floor, the room stilling. “Sorry. I just needed …” His eyes search mine, thumbs still sweeping in that gentle rhythm. “A nap?” he teases softly, tentatively. “A fantasy novel? A competitively fast oil change?” The block of ice in my chest cracks. “How do you do that?” His brow furrows. “Do what?” “Say the right thing.” The corner of his mouth quirks. “No one thinks that.” “I do.” His lashes splay across his cheeks as his gaze drops. “Maybe I just say the right thing for you.”

“A reminder that there are things in life so valuable that you must risk the pain of losing them for the joy of briefly having them.”

“You fucking undo me.”

“Some books you don’t read so much as live, and finishing one of those always makes me think of ascending from a scuba dive. Like if I surface too fast I might get the bends.”

“Because nothing—not the beautiful and not the terrible—lasts.”

“A good bookstore,” Charlie says, “is like an airport where you don’t have to take your shoes off.”

“Not every decision a woman makes is some grand indictment on other women’s lives.”

“that’s what made me fall in love with reading: the instant floating sensation, the dissolution of real-world problems, every worry suddenly safely on the other side of some metaphysical surface.”

“Until you got here,” he rasps, “all this place had ever been was a reminder of the ways I was a disappointment, and now you’re here, and—I don’t know. I feel like I’m okay. So if you’re the ‘wrong kind of woman,’ then I’m the wrong kind of man.” I can see all of the shades of him at once. Quiet, unfocused boy. Precocious, resentful preteen. Broody high schooler desperate to get out. Sharp-edged man trying to fit himself back into a place he never belonged to begin with. That’s the thing about being an adult standing beside your childhood race car bed. Time collapses, and instead of the version of you you’ve built from scratch, you’re all the hackneyed drafts that came before, all at once.”

“All those years spent thinking that I had superhuman self-control, and now I realize I just never put anything I wanted too badly in front of myself.”

“Life in New York was like being in a giant bookstore: all these trillions of paths and possibilities drawing dreamers into the city's beating heart, saying, I make no promises but I offer many doors.”

“Nora Stephens,” he says, “I’ve racked my brain and this is the best I can come up with, so I really hope you like it.” His gaze lifts, everything about it, about his face, about his posture, about him made up of sharp edges and jagged bits and shadows, all of it familiar, all of it perfect. Not for someone else, maybe, but for me. “I move back to New York,” he says. “I get another editing job, or maybe take up agenting, or try writing again. You work your way up at Loggia, and we’re both busy all the time, and down in Sunshine Falls, Libby runs the local business she saved, and my parents spoil your nieces like the grandkids they so desperately want, and Brendan probably doesn’t get much better at fishing, but he gets to relax and even take paid vacations with your sister and their kids. And you and I—we go out to dinner. “Wherever you want, whenever you want. We have a lot of fun being city people, and we’re happy. You let me love you as much as I know I can, for as long as I know I can, and you have it fucking all. That’s it. That’s the best I could come up with, and I really fucking hope you say—” I kiss him then, like there isn’t someone reading one of the Bridgerton novels five feet away, like we’ve just found each other on a deserted island after months apart. My hands in his hair, my tongue catching on his teeth, his palms sliding around behind me and squeezing me to him in the most thoroughly public groping we’ve managed yet. “I love you, Nora,” he says when we pull apart a few inches to breathe. “I think I love everything about you.”

“I’ll take you home whenever you want,” he says. “But if you want to stay, and you wake up screaming, it’s okay. I’ll make sure you’re okay. And if you want to stay, and then change your mind, I don’t mind driving you back at four a.m.” I read once that not everyone thinks in words. I was shocked, imagining these other people who don’t use language to make sense of everyone and everything, who don’t automatically organize the world into chapters, pages, sentences. Looking into Charlie’s face, I understand it. The way a crush of feeling and feathery impressions can move through your body, bypassing your mind. How a person can know there’s something worth saying but have no concept of what exactly that is. I’m not thinking in words.”

“You’re a fighter,” he says. “When you care about something, you won’t let anything fucking touch it. I’ve never met anyone who cares as much as you do. Do you know what most people would give to have someone like that in their life?”