“Our relationship wasn’t easy. It wasn’t mellow. It wasn’t comfortable and sedate. He was too bossy and I was too much of a smartass. We bantered and sometimes we fought. But I’d learned I was completely unable to endure Hawk being mad at me and then I’d noticed that Hawk felt the same. No grudges were ever held. We created sparks but those sparks never caught the kind of fire that could do damage. Instead, we got over it and moved on.”

“Forgetting wasn’t the same as being happy. Being drunk wasn’t the same as forgetting … we were at our most miserable when we’re doing it to ourselves.”

“It wasn’t was easy as picking one over the other. Nothing ever was. It wasn’t as though I’d even had a choice, not really.”

“I kept pushing against the black, though, almost a reflex. I wasn’t trying to lift it. I was just resisting. Not allowing it to crush me completely. I wasn’t Atlas, and the black felt as heavy as a planet; I couldn’t shoulder it. All I could do was not be entirely obliterated. It was sort of a pattern to my life—I’d never been strong enough to deal with the things outside of my control, to attack the enemies or outrun them. To avoid the pain. Always human and weak, the only thing I’d ever been able to do was keep going. Endure. Survive.”

“And when we left Colorado last month, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever make another friend again.”“But then I came into your life. Sounds like fate to me.”

“It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that I’d stumbled across the kind of man I used to find irresistible, or that he’d managed to stare right inside my brain to locate my weaknesses. The thrill of being wanted while pretending not to be interested was a game I’d played over and over during my youth. I’d grown up since then. I’d done more than my share of getting mixed up with men who were all ego and muscles, and he reminded me exactly why I’d given them up. Unfortunately, my body hadn’t got the memo yet.”