Chapter 9 The Unplanned Instinct

• She should have simply thanked him again and continued on her way home, ducking into the nearest shelter until the storm eased. That was what any sensible person would have done, and Thalia had always considered herself, if nothing else, reasonably sensible.
• Instead she found herself saying, "There's a covered porch two doors down. You can wait the worst of it out there, if you want."
• The offer surprised her even as she made it. She didn't invite strangers anywhere, not even somewhere as harmless as a covered porch, and yet something about the raw, unguarded way this man was looking at her, like she was simultaneously the most familiar and most impossible thing he'd ever seen, made the offer feel less like a risk and more like an obligation she couldn't quite explain.