“You! You tricked me! I never want to see you or that bottle of liquid arsenic again!”I chucked the empty moonshine jug at him. Or tried to. It missed him by a dozen feet.He picked it up in astonishment. “You drank the whole bloody thing? You were only supposed to have a few sips!”“Did you say that? Did you?” He reached me just as I felt the ground tip. “Didn’t say anything. I’ve got those names, so that’s all that matters, but you men…you’re all alike. Alive, dead, undead—all perverts! I had a drunken pervert in my pants! Do you know how unsanitary that is?”Bones held me upright. I would have protested, but I couldn’t remember how to. “What are you saying?”“Winston poltergeisted my panties, that’s what!” I announced with a loud hiccup.“Why, you scurvy, lecherous spook!” Bones yelled in the direction of the cemetery. “If my pipes still worked, I’d go right back there and piss on your grave!”

“but you men... you're all alike. Alive, dead, undead- all perverts! I had a drunken pervert in my pants! Do you know how unsanitary that is?""What are you saying?""Winston poltergeisted my panties, that's what!""Why, you scurvy, lecherous spook! If my pipes still worked, I'd go right back there and piss on your grave!”

“You scare me, Ryan Daley. Even more than those demons outside that scream for my death. How is it that I want what you want? I’ve spent an eternity feeling powerless. Love did that to me — robbed me of all control. I never expected to feel this way again. I don’t want to feel.’‘Neither did I,’ Ryan rasps, ‘because feeling anything at all was dangerous. If I let myself feel, then maybe I’d have to believe what everyone was saying — that Lauren was dead. But from the moment I laid eyes on “Carmen, you kept getting under my skin. At first, all you did was irritate the hell out of me, bailing me up that way outside my house, inviting yourself along for the ride when all I wanted was to be left alone. But that irritation turned into curiosity, which turned into something else, becoming this chain of, of … feeling that brought me here. I dropped everything for you. I veered left. And I’d do it again in a second. That’s what “feeling” does. It tells you you’re alive, it gives things … I don’t know, proper meaning. You’re still trying to maintain some veneer of independence? Toughness? Do words like that even apply to you? But I see through it, Mercy. I see through you. You’re not that different from me after all, under your armour. Crumbs, Mercy, that’s all I’m after. Just crumbs. It’s not a lot to ask for.”

“What do you want?” I grumbled, not really sure if I was imagining his voice or not. “I’m not a figment of your imagination.” “Then how did you know what I was thinking if you’re not all in my mind? Besides, that’s just what a figment would say.” I scrunched up my face in a display of my skepticism”

“I kissed his forehead. “You don’t have to thank me. I told you, I do anything for someone I care about.”He pulled away and looked up at me. “You said you do anything for someone you love.”I didn’t know how to respond to that. We were in such a precarious place. I didn’t want to say anything that might scare him away or let him know how I truly felt, because at the end of the day, I loved him. It was that simple. Instead I gave him a small smile. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

“I realized something tonight when you were in the arena doing your thing.”She took another deep breath of the roses’ scent. “What was it?”“I love you, Elle.”Her eyes flared wide to search his and her heart stopped.“Do you love me?”“Yes, I love you, Chase.”Simple, sure, an indisputable fact she couldn’t’ve held on her tongue if she’d wanted to. But was she ready to love somebody who loved her back?Was she?“You had me since Spin Master,” he said, with that grin she loved. “But I didn’t know it ‘til tonight.”“Oh, well, then, I get it,” she said, smiling back. “You only loved me ‘cause I saved your life.”“I want you to save it again.”He stood up to pull something out of the front pocket of his starched jeans. He reached for her hand.“I’m asking you to marry me, Elle. Will you?”Tears blurred her vision. They caught in her throat. Oh, God, how could she ever be a wife again? But how could she ever leave Chase?She tried to buy herself a little time to think. “You said you don’t trust women.”“Only you. I trust you. I trusted you with my life the first time I ever saw you.”That made her grin. And then she felt very solemn. He was looking right into her soul, holding her hand in his big calloused one. She clung to it.“You’re in a league of your own, Elle. Not just was a bull-fighter, but in every way.”She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to think. She knew she loved him, but this was scary.“You’re not the marrying kind, Chase. You’ve told me that a dozen times.”“I changed my mind.”“I’ve been married, Chase. It didn’t last. I left him.”He lifted one big shoulder.“What will last is that I love you,” he said. “That’ll never change. I’ll follow you all over the country if I have to, just to get a glimpse of you. Just to hear you laugh. You can work as many rodeos as you want. You can do anything you want and even if I’m not there, wherever I am, I’ll be loving you. Until I die.”“You’re looking at me as if it’s a done deal,” she said, smiling.His grin broadened. “It is. I can convince you. I know I’m good.”She laughed.“You might as well save us some time. You know I got no quit in me.”“Yes, I do know that.”“So what do you say?”“The main problem is that you’re not the man who’ll do everything I say. I told you that’s what I have to have before I’ll marry again.”“How d’you know I’m not him? I’ve been pretty pliable here lately, wouldn’t you say?”“You are so full of it, Chase Lomax.”“You’re the one who told me I have to get a life after rodeo. Well, that’s exactly what I’m tryin’ to do, right here.”