“Yeah, but damn!" Kate said, fanning herself with her hand. "When I was your age all of the guys were trying to prove how anti-establishment they were by out-uglying each other. I so got robbed!”

“Of course a lot of guys were ashamed. Somebody said let's go out and fight for liberty and so they went out and got killed without ever once thinking of liberty. And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose kind of liberty? Were they fighting for the liberty of eating free ice cream cones all their lives or for the liberty of robbing anybody they pleased whenever they wanted to or what? You tell a man he can't rob and you take away some of his liberty. You've got to. What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he's talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it? No sir anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar.”

“When I got a bad grade in my old boarding school, Kate would make a trip to the school to chew me out. When I got homesick, I'd flunk a grade on purpose. Sometimes she came by herself. Sometimes with other people. Boy kind of people. Of whom I promised myself I wouldn't be thinking about, because they were idiots.”

“Curran and Kate stood by the door.“I can’t believe you decided to come down here and check on me,” she said.“The guy once handed you a fan and told you to fan yourself if the sight of his naked torso was too much.”“That was like a year ago. Will you let it go already?”“No.” Curran grabbed her and pulled her to him, kissing her. “Never.”She kissed him back and smiled.Awww. Kate and the Beast Lord sitting in a tree…”

“I like your room," I said truthfully."Yeah? I like it too. Mom tried to guy it all up when I left for school but...""Guy it all up?" I asked, cocking a questioning brow at him."Yeah. When I came back my first break from college, she had decorated everything in swimming. Water waves bedspread. Michael Phelps posters, my old trophies and medals on my shelf. She even had a poster over my bed that said 'Swimmers Do It Right'." I laughed and then covered it with my hand. "Yeah, so I fixed it. I like things plain, not loud.”

“It was impossible to tell how she felt. When she tried to look inside of herself, all she saw were tangled things shifting in and out of focus.”