“Give me a night by the fire, with a book in my hand, not that flickering rectangular son of a bitch that sits screaming in every living room in the land.”

“Give me a room whose every nook is dedicated to a book.”

“Can I see it?" He blinked, still scowling, "See what?" "Your scar." His expression darkened like a sudden eclipse and I let my gaze grow cold. "You want to hear me scream? Give it your best shot. But until then, every time you take off your shirt, you may as well be handing out my business card. I shoved my blade deep inside you and loved every single inch of it. When I can't sleep at night, the memory of you screaming like a little bitch is my lullaby. And everybody knows exactly what that scar means- that you got your ass handed to you by a little girl. Again.”

“And this is the library,” Mrs. Simcosky said, leading Beth into a generous room with a fire flickering in a river rock fireplace. “Or, as Mason liked to call it, my love den.” She drifted to one of the floor to ceiling book shelves and trailed her fingers down a bevy of colorful spines. “He used to call my books ‘the other men’.”

“My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.”

“my mother never saw the irony of calling me a "son of a bitch”