“V had been keeping his eye on the guy. After they'd spent hours alone together, they'd parted awkwardly and taken separate showers. Fortunately, though, the hot water had been a reset for them both, and when they'd met up again in the Pit's kitchen, it had been business as usual. And shit remained that way”

“Though neither of them had ever called their meeting a case of love at first sight, they'd both agreed it had certainly been a case of "pretty damned sure at first hour.”

“They'd spent their lives not breaking laws, and till now they'd thought the rest of the world had been doing the same. But someone had changed the rules and forgotten to send them a telegram”

“They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.”

“...and then Danny was moving on him in the rhythm they'd found so easily in the past, their bodies remembering the way of it as if they'd never been apart, as if they'd only been waiting to find each other again.”

“Even if they'd known that an attack had just been struck by one of their parents, they'd also have known that it wasn't their battle.”