“I knew I was gone for you. Don’t know how it happened, just know it did.”

“It never works. I don’t know. It just doesn’t. You can love someone a lot and treat them nice and do everything for them and then they just go. It happens.”

“Today, I show you Lake Como even though I don’t know fuck all about Lake Como; I do know how to drive a boat. Tonight, no parties, no friends, no nothing. You, me, dinner. Later tonight, just you and me. You with me?”“I’m with you,” I whispered, and I was with him. So with him.”

“But you know what else never happened to me?""Tell me," he ordered, still...freaking...grinning."Seeing him just a day later in a clinch with a brunette.""You knew me, you'd know she didn't have staying power and you'd know you do.""And how's that?" I snapped."She's dark, you're red. I'll fuck dark, I'll fuck sun but only red has staying power. Considered sun once. Lost her. Now it's you.”

“I had the taste of you in my mouth, so sweet, for four years. Your grudge and you hatin' me made that taste as bitter as it was sweet. Didn't get it, what I was feelin', not until I heard you were gettin' hitched. Then I knew I was gone for you. Don't know how it happened, just know it did. Seein' you with another guy cut deep. Then you lost him, and I felt it. And when you called me, I realized if I didn't get my shit together it would be empty pussy and parties for the rest of my life, and I'd never have a woman who was lost without me." His hand moved from my waist to frame the side of my face and his voice got quiet when he said, "Just to be clear, the point of findin' that is not makin' a woman be lost without me like Rosalie will be for a while until she moves on. The point of findin' that is to have the feeling, be able to give that gift, to work at keepin' it good so my woman never feels list because she knows she'll never be without me.”

“What just happened was somethin’ that was bigger than all that. It was bigger than everything. I had a taste of you four years ago that I could never get off my tongue. Now, I’ve tasted more of you with more than just my mouth and I know I wanna keep it in a way I Don’t want to think of it ever bein’ done. Not in a few weeks. Not in a few months. Maybe not ever.”

“I don’t need to say aloud what I know you also are beginning to understand, wee one.”