“You were happy last night. This morning is a different story.""You think I have a hangover. I don't. Well a little headache, but not much. Just let this be a warning to you if you keep me from sleeping again tonight.""I kept you from sleeping? I kept you from sleeping?" he repeated incredulously. "You are the same woman who shook me out of a sound sleep at two a.m. yesterday morning, aren't you?""I didn't shake you. I kind of bounced on you, but I didn't shake you.""Bounced," he repeated."You had a hard-on. I couldn't let it go to waste, could I?""You could have woke me up before you started not to let it go to waste.""Look," she said exasperated, "If you don't want used, don't lie on your back with it sticking up like that. If that isn't an invitation, I don't know what is.""I was asleep. It does that on its own." It was doing it on its own right know, as a matter of fact. It poked her in the stomach.She looked down... and smiled. It was a smile that made his testicles draw up in fear.With a sniff, she turned her back on him and ignored him as she finished showering."Hey!" he said, to get her attention. Alarm was in his tone. "You aren't going to let this one go to waste are you?”

“This could be the last night of our lives, certainly the last even barely ordinary one. The last night we go to sleep and get up just as we always have. And all I could think of was that I wanted to spend it with you."Her heart skipped a beat. "Jace-""I don't mean it like that," he said. "I won't touch you, not if you don't want me to. I know it's wrong - God, it's all kinds of wrong - but I just want to lie down with you and wake up with you, just once, just once ever in my life." There was desperation in his voice. "It's just this one night. In the grand scheme of things, how much can this one night matter?" ...There was nothing she had ever wanted in her life more than she wanted this night with Jace."Close the curtains, then, before you come to bed," she said. "I can't sleep with this much light in the room.”

“You came." His gaze held hers. "And I knew that you are not useful to me, Ash. Not anymore. Except as a reason to get up in the morning --" "You don't sleep anymore," she reminded him, smiling. "Except as a reason to keep breathing --" "You don't need air." He narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm still new at this Guardian thing. So just shut up, and let me tell you that I love you.”

“Do you know what it was like kissing Holly and looking up to see you?""What?""You said to begin anywhere."But I hadn't expected that as a beginning, middle or end. I felt my cheeks getting warm. "I guess it was pretty embarrassing for both of us," I said, and walked ahead of him so he wouldn't see my face. "I know, I just kept staring at you.""What were you thinking?""I don't remember.""Don't you start using that line," he chided."Then don't ask me, Nick." Did he suspect how I felt.He caught me and turned me around to face him. I focused on his shirt. "Okay," he said quietly, "I'll tell you what I was thinking. I couldn't believe that I, who was never going to get hooked, had fallen in love with a girl who didn't want to date, and she was watching me kiss somebody else."I glanced up."Your turn, brave girl. What were you thinking?""That Holly looked beautiful in your arms and that you didn't pull away from her the way you had pulled away from me when I kissed you."He drew me to him. "I'm not pulling away again," he said holding me close.”

“You like doing that, don't you?''Yes, I like kissing you.''No,' she said, 'lifting me off my feet. Carrying me around. Pulling me down to kiss you whenever you get the urge.' She turned to him with a mock glare. 'I think it goes hand in hand with the telling me what to do stuff.'He didn't let go of her hand as he lifted his to run the back of one knuckle down her cheek. 'You like it, too.”

“I don't know whether you're lying to me or you're telling me the truth. But if you're telling me the truth, that she's dead, it's the best news that I ever heard. Nobody else is going to say this to you. Everybody else is going to commiserate. But I grew up with you. I talk straight to you. The best thing for you is for her to be dead. She did not belong to you. She did not belong to anything you were. She did not belong to anything anyone is. You played ball--there was a field of play. She was not on the field of play. She was nowhere near it. Simple as that. She was out of bounds, a freak of nature, way out of bounds. You are to stop your mourning for her. You've kept this wound open for twenty-five years. And twenty-five years is enough. It's driven you mad. Keep it any longer and it's going to kill you. She's dead? Good! Let her go. Otherwise it will rot in your gut and take your life too." That's what I told him. I thought I could let the rage out of him. But he just cried. He couldn't let it go. I said this guy was going to get killed from this thing, and he did.”