It is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.

I knew Ginny was lying about that tattoo.

Panic and terror aren't the only kinds of fear. There are deeper kinds, more terrible kinds. Apprehension and heavy, heavy dread.

My birthday was coming up and we hadn't talked about it. I dreaded it. I was in no mood to celebrate the one day that always reminded me of my unfortunate birth. Celebrations were supposed to be happy things and there was nothing happy about this year or that day.

When she lay curled against him, her skin dewed from passion, there was still that small, cold place inside of her where the heat hadn't quite reached.

He wanted his mother with the fiery need of a five-year-old lost at Disneyland.