All we get are moments, Cole. One at a time, like heartbeats. Once all of them is gone, that’s it. No do-overs. No repeats. Every moment possesses its down kind of magic and what we do with it counts. It counts.

— Autumn Doughton

But I broke your heart,” she whispers. I shrug and kiss her again. “You break it, you buy it.

— Autumn Doughton

Did you ever think that maybe we’re like that?” she asks me. I smile into the dark. How many times have I thought of myself as the ocean? “You think we’re like water?” Gemma sits up. The salty wind coming off the water snaps her hair around her shoulders. With one hand in the middle of my chest, she tries to push me into the sand. I’m strong enough to hold her off, but I don’t want to. I willingly collapse back and she crawls over me. Holding a smile on her face, she slips her legs on either side of my hips and settles her weight on me. In a voice thin as smoke, she says, “Well, maybe that’s how we start. Maybe, in the beginning, we’re nothing but a theoretical vast and empty sea with this huge open sky above us.” Her hands press down on my stomach and her fingers pull at the bottom of my shirt. She leans forward until her breasts are rubbing against me and her mouth is almost touching the skin of my neck.“Then slowly,” she continues, “over time, the currents change, and we build up these continents inside our bodies.” Now her fingers walk a path from my bellybutton to my sternum. “And eventually, we have canyons and deserts and trees and beaches and all sorts of places where we can go and live.” I suck in a breath as Gemma flattens her hand on the skin just above my heart and kisses me just below my ear. Then she turns her face, fitting the crown of her head beneath my jaw and says, “Most of the time we’re safe on the land, but sometimes we get sucked out to sea. What do you think happens then?” I think about everything we’ve shared today. I think about Gemma and me. And how it feels like the geography inside my own body is changing, how it’s been changing from the moment I met her. Maybe even before that. And I think about the continents we’re building between us. The bridges of land moving from her fingers to mine and the valleys and mountains formed by her lips on my skin and her words in my head. I use both of my hands to cup her face and pull her to my mouth. I press my lips to hers, parting her mouth and drinking in her breath. “I think you’d have to start swimming.” A minute of silence ticks by. Over the low drone of the waves on the beach, she whispers, “And what if you can’t swim very well?” I think for a minute. “Then you fly.

— Autumn Doughton

I can barely breathe, but I think that his lips might be better than oxygen at the moment.

— Autumn Doughton

I have a theory that the world is broken up into two kinds of people."" Yeah?"" Yep. On the one side are the people who love the Harry Pottery books and wish that they could attend Hogwarts and have Ron and Hermione for best friends and vanquish Death Eaters and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." She's smiling at me, and she's just so fucking cute. I have to ask: "And the other side?" Aimee shrugs. "Douchebags.

— Autumn Doughton

I'm being fair, it was the best kiss of my life- a kiss that finds all your seams and pulls them apart, stitch by detail stitch.

— Autumn Doughton

In my defense, the Easter Bunny is the weakest link in magical lore. I mean, you have to admit that the whole thing is ridiculous. A giant rodent who sneaks into people's homes at night to leave eggs filled with candy? How in the world is that symbolic of the Easter celebration?

— Autumn Doughton

It’s hard to say how it happens. How all the bits of me – even the broken ones – start to tumble. I think it’s my toes that go first. Next – my legs and the hallow spaces behind my ribs. And then my arms all the way down through my wrist bones to the tips of my fingers. My lips part and I realize that this is what it feels like to fall.

— Autumn Doughton

Loving her is strange and confusing and damn risky. And if I had the chance I'd choose it all over again.

— Autumn Doughton

Maybe the problem with lying is that once you start faking it, it's impossible to tell where the make-believe you ends and the real you begin. It's hard to be who you are, but it's even harder to keep up the lie.

— Autumn Doughton