“These guys, my guys, are a bunch of assholes and I have to dig deep to find things about them I like so I can keep their secrets and keep them alive. Then they do these things, they betray me, and I have to let go of the love I worked so hard to find and splatter their brains all over the wall. ”

“I made the best mistakes. It was not like the sun came up or I stopped crying or I had any more power within me. It was not like all those sensual metaphors of awakening that keep you chained to hope. I still go to bed at night and hate—and hate knowing that the world's a mirror.”

“Sarah drew a deep breath and released it slowly, waiting for her voice to steady before she spoke. “It’s a ve ry good story. Are those the things you want for yourself? ”He nodded and began folding the advertisement. “But I can’t have them,” he said matter-of-factly.“Why not?”He shrugged as if it was obvious and she remembered that earlier he had declared, “I’m not normal.” She had to admit it was hard to picture this strange man living a normal family life in an average community. His differences were stamped all over his body as well as hidden deep inside him.”

“I want to take care of it. I need to do something to make up for…” He breathed out shakily. His hands clenched at his sides and he stared at the ground. “I’m sorry for making all of this happen. He was right. I should have stayed away from you. I’ve brought you nothing but trouble.”Sarah grabbed his shoulders and forced him to look into her eyes. “No! Forgeteverything that man ever said. You did nothing wrong. Not ever. He made this happen.”She grasped his hands and held them. “I don’t know how many more ways I can say it.I’m happy you came here. You’ve…” she hesitated over the melodramatic words, but they were the truth and he needed to hear them, “brought my heart to life again.”She rubbed her hands over his bandaged ones then lifted them to her mouth andkissed the backs of them.She gestured to the smolder ruin. “We’ll take care of that later. Right now I have something more important for you to do. I want you to come inside with me. I need you to hold me.”His eyes were glistening as he looked into hers. He nodded then took her hand and followed her into the house.”

“There’s this girl…this woman I can’t get out of my mind.” He spilled the story of his seduction of sweet, innocent Amanda McCormick for Rufus’s examination. When he finished talking, there was another silence.“You did that?” Rufus’s voice was as deep and gravelly as a quarry.“Fucked some poor virgin while posing as her fiancé?”“Yeah.”“You got some balls. How’d you know you’d be a close enough match to this Baxter?”“Brown hair, blue eyes, that’s all she seemed to know about him.”Spence couldn’t explain his need for the rush of tempting fate. “I took a chance. It was a gamble.”“Jesus, you’re a mean son of a bitch.”“I didn’t want to hurt her. I was just having fun.” He sounded like a spoiled child even to himself. “And now you want to go see this woman and try to make it right?”Rufus said. “Just how the hell did you think you were going to fix it? Byshowing up and wrecking her marriage, if you haven’t done that already?”It was Spence’s turn to pause.“Haven’t you done enough to this lady? Where’s your head, boy?Leave her alone.”“I can’t. I have to see her again.” He didn’t want to share his dreamsof the little girl. He’d sound crazy.Rufus laughed harshly. “So you can try and get another piece of tail?”“No. It’s not like that.”“What? You think you’re in love. Son, you don’t know the first thingabout it. If you did, you’d be putting this woman’s needs above your own.”He thought of the little girl telling him to go to Amanda. “Maybe whatshe needs is me.”Rufus made a scoffing noise. “A woman needs a man who’ll stand byher, be there through hard times and good. From what you’ve told methese past months, this is the longest you’ve stayed put in one place inyour life and that’s only ‘cause they won’t let you out.”“I just want to do the right thing.”“Then do like I say. Leave her be. You think she’s going to be happyto see you again?”Spence pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders and watched a gray cloud puff from his mouth.“You still there, boy?”“Where else?”“Don’t take it too hard. Everybody does things they’re sorry for.Sometimes there’s just no way to make it right.”He leaned back against the wall and reviewed the stupid chain of events that had landed him in jail. Maybe Rufus was right and there was no way he could ever apologize for what he’d done to Amanda. He should let the whole thing slide and leave the woman in peace.”

“It's like I get into a roller coaster, and sit there while it goes up and down and upside down and sometimes I get thrown out and I hit my head, but I crawl back in again and the moment I'm back in, it just keeps on going and going again...all of this, so I can find things out and then I write about the things I find out so you can find them out from me. All the bruises, all the wounds, all the bumps on the head, all the scars, just so I can take that and I can write all these things, and sometimes I say "God, I don't want to be in this roller coaster anymore." But when I think about it, if I'm not right here, then where the hell would I be? On the sidewalk? I wasn't born to stand on the sidewalk, I was born to fly around crazy in the sky!”

“I think there's something so attractive about mystery. There's something so attractive about the chase. And the bad guy ... bad boys know how to keep the chase going throughout an entire relationship because you never know if you completely have them or not. That's why they're so hard to get over.”