“I carried you to the Explorer and you couldn’t even hold your head up. You passed out in my lap after you told me there was no one to care if you woke up. I live to be a hundred, mamita, I’ll never forget it. Not one fuckin’ second of it.”

“You live in your head too much, you curl up and shut shit out and spend so much time doing it, you forget to live your life. You can’t live your life in your head. That isn’t living.”

“Now he knew it was worse. Fuck. Deck wasn’t done. “Lined up two hundred women, told me to choose the one for you, I’d choose the one back there. Settin’ myself up for what I’m gonna see again, gonna hold onto the knowledge that a year ago, my boy had one serious, fuckin’ bitch sleepin’ in his bed and he was sleepin’ in his guest room.”

“I don’t put up with the shit you’ve handed me the last week because you’re some fuckin’ piece I want to conquer. I put up with it because I’ve liked you since you were eight years old. You made me laugh. You understood me. You looked out for me when no one else fuckin’ bothered and you acted like you thought I could move mountains and I needed someone who thought that about me because my Dad sure as fuck didn’t.”

“I was your man, you were halfway around the world from me, honey, I'd fuckin' phone you," he said quietly."Niles is reserved," I whispered."Niles is an ass," he returned and my brows drew together."You don't know him.""I know men, and I know he's not reserved, he's an ass."I pulled my head together, my hand from his and snapped, "Yes? And how do you know that?""Because I've seen you naked, I've seen you sweet, I've seen you unsure and I've seen you riled and, seein' all that, I know, you were half a world away from me, I'd fuckin' phone.""Perhaps that's not the kind of relationship Niles and I have," I suggested snottily, but his words hit me somewhere deep, somewhere I didn't know I had."You on a timeout?""What?""If you told me you needed a timeout, first, I wouldn't fuckin' let you have one, second, I wouldn't give you reason to fuckin' want one, last, you took off anyway, I'd fuckin' phone.”

“Jules, I’ll tell you now what I would have told you at dinner if you’d been speakin’ to me. This,” he said, one hand dropping to my bottom and pulling my hips into his, one going up my back to press my torso to his chest, “is the sweetest thing I’ve had in my life and I haven’t even f**ked you yet. I never expected to get a chance at anything so sweet and now that I got it, I’m not gonna let it go.”

“You been asleep, baby."My body went still at his words. Tack kept talking."Green tea. Yoga. No TV. Placemats for your coffee table. Thursday night takeaway. You got a night for takeaway. Scheduled. A narrow, little world. Fuck me. Crazy. Fuckin' whacked. I woke you up, opened your eyes to a bigger world and scared you shitless.”