To him, Leah represents freedom. She's like the wind or the tide, who knows who controls the way she behaves? She's wild and brash and anything she wants to do she does and anything she wants to have she takes and everything she says transforms into little filigree flowers in the air, twisting and curling and floating away into the stars. She runs and runs and runs, and every step she means and every mistake is golden. She reminds him of how everything should be, just the two of them, two savage teenagers running wild in the forest, like their people did before them, years and years and years ago. She reminds him of the first rays of sunlight in the morning, bold and cunning as they cut through the dawn. The things she says are rude and the faces she makes are nasty and sometimes she is down right mean, but it's absolutely stunning either way. He's never met another girl that could act so, so, so... He can't even describe it. He's never met another person so alive. She's ungrateful for everything, but she takes nothing for granted. He pictures her galloping around a field, plucking forget-me-nots out of the dirt and weaving them through her hair. Her laughter is loud and boisterous and she reminds him of the bull in the china shop, except she's more like a gazelle: so beautiful and graceful and so capable of destroying everything. There are so many things she doesn't know and so many things she doesn't care about. She shrugs him off with a roll of her eyes, and sometimes she's so blasé it hurts. But when she kisses, it's heated, and she could convince a man that she invented it. And when she loves, she does it with a whole-hearted passion that only Leah Clearwater could pull off. She's intense and she's deliberate and she makes promises that last forever, with threats of needles in eyes.

Emily is nothing like Leah, and thank God for that. She represents his future, and he knows that he can trust her with it. Emily is delicate. She is polite. She is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to matters of the home. She can sew patches on tears. She can make the perfect loaf of banana bread. She can remove the most stubborn stain from a favorite shirt. Emily knows what it takes to create a home, and make a family, and thank God for that.

Sam knows that Leah could never do any of that. All Leah Clearwater knows is rock and roll, and yelling and me! me! me! Honestly though, sometimes he misses the chaos.

But, hey, every guy has got to settle down some time, right? It can't always be fighting and cliff diving and driving too fast and living too loud, right? And everyone knows that homes aren't made out of things like cigarettes and booze and attitude as lively as fire, right?

Right?