“If I do this, something will go wrong and this man will hurt me. I know it as sure as I’m sitting here next to him feeling how much he makes me want to say yes.”

“I know I’m doing something wrong and I feel guilty but neither of those things matter enough to make me stop”

“And I know Blake had a bunch of fucking problems going on the night he was shot. But Mouse here made sure the hired guns were dead before they could hurt him. I don’t know if I get to call him a hero, if that’s allowed, because I’m a bad man, and he was my friend. But he was a hero to me.”

“I pause. My face feels warm, but pleasantly so. It occurs to me that, no matter how much I avoid him, no matter how wrong I know he is for me, he is going to be nearly impossible to resist.Dammit!”

“Healing for me is being able to sit next to the butcher and say 'Yes, I’m sitting next to the butcher now,' instead of saying 'there is no butcher'.”

“Why are you leaving me?He wrote, I do not know how to live.I do not know either but I am trying.I do not know how to try.There were some things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So i buried them and let them hurt me”