“But there’s more. When I was on my way to the event today, Carolyn texted me and told me that Steve and Eve got married over break. Six months after he broke up with me, and after he kept telling me he didn’t see marriage inhis future! And did I tell you that he broke up with me at the school, during the Fitness Fun-a-Thon fundraising eventwe worked at?” Her face grew reflective. “I was handing out bottled water when he asked me to go behind the hydration station so he could talk to me privately. The whole time, Eve kept staring at us from the finish line of the three-legged race.She knew I was getting dumped before I did.”

“the next morning, fang and i broke up. now let me get this strait, i broke up with him. a split second after he broke up with me.”

“Got it all scheduled,” he noted.“Yes,” I returned. “What’s a huge-ass wedding?”“Don’t ask that,” I advised. “Just show up.”His grin turned wicked and I liked it. That was, I liked it until he enquired, “You askin’ me to marry you, Red?”I wasn’t even sipping coffee and, still, I chocked. Then I pushed out, “What?”“I accept.”I shook my head and kept shaking it when I requested clarification, “Let me get this straight. Did you just accept my non-marriage offer?”“Non-marriage?”“I didn’t ask!” My voice was rising. “So you just wanna shack up?” he asked but didn’t wait on my answer. “I’m good with that too.”Gah!“I’m getting my huge-ass wedding,” I declared.“So you are askin’ me to marry you,” he noted. Gah! Gah! Gah!!Sharp as a tack.Someone kill me.”

“Tell me, Tayla," he whispered as he broke away. "Did you eveer imagine me doing this to you?""Tell me what I want to know and I"ll reward you."~Ethan”

“It was so awful! And he kept on looking at me and I knew I must get out of bed or he'd come and touch me. I did, too, but when I got out I wasn't me-I was a little white bunny. And he started out of the room and I had to go with him for fear he'd touch me. It felt so horrid, going out with him and looking back at mother there asleep."We went into the main part of the house, and one of the big front doors was open, and we went out through it. And then he gave a big jump, and so did I, and it took us clear up into the sky. We couldn't fly, but we kept jumping and jumping."Sometimes we stayed in the sky a little while, jumping from cloud to cloud, and the moon would get closer and closer and bigger and bigger, and its face would change and get horrible and grin at us until it seemed like its mouth was a mile wide and open, to swallow us up. And then we'd come down again and jump from one cliff to another, and the sea would be roaring down under us, and the waves all grey and cold and moving around and boiling like they were mad or afraid."We went all over the island and sometimes we jumped over the sea to the mainland and back again; and sometimes I tried to get away and run back to Mother - I thought she'd know me even if I was a bunny - but always, whichever way I turned, the hare was there in front of me, and his teeth were shining."We kept it up all night, and I was so tired and cold and miserable, and so scared. I didn't know whether he would ever let me go home or whether he would take me to Aunt Sarai. Then finally I did get away and the hare chased me!"She broke off, her voice rising again to a wail."It was so awful! I ran all over the island, into all sorts of queer little places that I never knew were there before - it seems so different after dark - and finally, when two or three times I'd been so tired that I thought I just couldn't go any farther, before he caught me, I saw the house in front of me and the front door still open and I started to run in, and then I thought - what if they'd planned it that way, and Aunt Sarai had come down from her portrait and was inside there in the dark, waiting for me?”

“And Father said, "Christopher, do you understand that I love you?"And I said "Yes," because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.”