“Brennan didn’t look exactly like Raif to Shayla’s eyes, but for someone who didn’t know either man particularly well, they probably looked like twins, separated at birth by twenty or so years.”

“Cortez looked like someone newly in love, the way only twenty-four-year-olds can look.”

“A man knows what he likes, so sex with some men is like sex with a mind reader, someone who knows exactly how you like it.”

“I pictured a girl who made every moment, everything she touched, and everyone around her feel lighter and sweeter.“I pictured you,” he said. “I just didn’t know what you looked like.“And then, when I did know what you looked like, you looked like the girl who was all those things. You looked like the girl I loved.”

“The world didn’t like to look at the dark underside very often. But that didn’t change the ugliness; it only ensured that those who perpetuated the ugliness were left alone to kill and maim and rape.”

“Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.”