“When?”“When what?”“When are you going to marry her? Assuming she’ll have you.”“When this thing with Sancho is over.”Jack laughed. “That could be forever. Your tongue is hanging out as it is.”“That’s not my tongue.”Which only made Jack laugh harder. “Just do it. Before she leaves you standing in the dust with your cock in your hand.”“Hell, I’d need two hands for that.”

“I don’t care,” Livy stated emphatically. “I don’t care if our marriage is nullified. As for our children, they will be loved and they will be taught to laugh at society’s rules when they don’t suit them. They will have your strength of conviction, Jack, and your mother’s strength of purpose. We will all honor her. She was a remarkable woman. I wish I’d had an opportunity to know her. She gave me something very precious. “I love you, Jack Dodger. I love you with all my heart and soul. If I must live with you without benefit of marriage, so be it. I shall do it with no regrets and with an amazing amount of pride that you’ve chosen me to stand at your side. And when I go to hell, I shall gladly dance with you.”

“Don’t you two dare say a thing,” she pointed a finger at us, straightening her skirt with the other hand. “Just bite your tongues.”“You look great, Lucinda.”“And you’re a liar and should have your mouth washed out with soap,” she tugged on the sleeves of her cardigan. “Nice pearls,” I pointed to her neck.“Didn’t I tell ya’ll to bite yer tongues,” Gram’s southern drawl became more pronounced when she was irritated.”

“Pete squeezed Jack's hand, hard as she could. "You're not alone," she told him. "If you've made up your mind to die, then I'll be with you here, until the end. I'd follow you into death if that's what you asked, Jack. Heaven, Hell. Anywhere at all.”

“No, Nathan, no." She wrapped his face in her hands. "I just need you--all of you--so much that I'm going crazy. I need your laugh. I need your company. I need you to sleep beside me and I need you to wake when I wake. I need you with everything in me.”

“Julia Kline, you’ve spent your whole life running and all you’ve done is run farther away from the love that’s been waiting for you all along. The first time you smiled at me with your two missing teeth you had my undivided attention. When you laugh, I want to laugh with you. When you cry, I want to be the one to hold you. When you said you loved me, you highjacked my heart forever. They say that love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. Your happiness is what I will spend the rest of my life striving to give you. I love you so much. Will you do the honor of marrying me?”