“He thought Mabel would cry, and he wanted to be anywhere else. It was wrong and cowardly, and he'd done it before--when Mabel lost the baby and shook with grief...But it was like the need to take a breath. The urge was too strong, and without saying another word, Jack left the cabin.”

“He always apologized, and sometimes he would even cry because of the bruises he'd made on her arms or legs or her back. He would say that he hated what he'd done, but in the next breath tell her she'd deserved it. That if she'd been more careful, it wouldn't have happened. That if she'd been paying attention or hadn't been so stupid, he wouldn't have lost his temper.”

“I'd always thought there was something wrong with me," he confessed. "I thought I was wrong to want this."And she knew he wasn't weeping because of the sadness or shock, but because all babies cry when they're born.Nora & Michael”

“He kissed her. Without warning, without permission. Without even deciding to do it, but simply because he couldn't have done anything else. He needed that breath she was holding. It belonged to him, and he wanted it back.”

“Jack hadn’t thought of love as a promise before—a promise that, even when the world was falling down around him, would stay kept. But without Sutton saying a word, he knew that there would be comfort when he couldn’t sleep tonight. And tomorrow and the day after, there would be a home to go to, even if it was no more than a pair of arms around him and a head tucked close to his in the darkness.”

“[...] he felt that he too was only a baby, with the chance to live without shame, without the need for consolation for a life lived wrong, a chance to be again innocent, simply and impossibly happy.”