“His voice was so gravelly I could drive a truck on it. And I would have, but I came carrying my bicycle.”

“I'm so ready you could drive a truck straight up my ass and I would bend over and push back until it was in to the rear bumper.”

“Rachel,” came a raspy voice from the upper level, and both Trent and I turned. It was Quen, wrapped in a blanket as if it was a death shroud, the black-haired intern at his side, supporting him. His hair was plastered to his skull with sweat, and I could see him wavering as he stood there. “Don’t touch Trenton,” he said, his gravelly voice clear in the hush, “or I’m going to have to come down there…and smack you around.”

“But you know: you know that if I could have stayed, if I could have gone on, that I would have clutched every second: whatever it was, this death, you know that it came and took me, like a child carried away by goblins.”

“It came to my house.It sat on my shoulders.Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours.I have carried it with me too long. I give it back.”

“She came to find me. She came to find me,” Blake said. His voice was a mixture of revelation and revulsion. “Do you think, Cole, that I could love her? Could I have a life with her?”