“He had never thought in his wildest imagination of marriage as an option forhim. Never believed there was a woman out there that would make him sign up for that particular brand of madness. And, in the abstract at least, it still sounded like madness but this wasn’t about marriage, it was about Riley. With her, he knew that boyfriend-girlfriend shit wasn’t going to be enough. He had to have her locked down.”

“I had lunch with my brothers,” Mark said, his face serious. “While you were still asleep. They told me. About Corey and that stupid set-up you agreed to where you’d pretend not to be my wife . . .”“I never agreed to pretend not to be your wife,” Dylan said.Mark’s face grew serious then. “That’s what it amounted to in the end though, didn’t it? You pulled away from me in exchange for me getting . . . what?”“Your career back,” Dylan said. “Your life.”“Dylan, you’re my life. You.”

“Brendan's not the guy you use to figure your shit out, Brendan's the guy you hope you get once you have figured your shit out.”

“The sting of her abandonment had not lessened through the years, and I suspected it would never go away. Occasionally, I could see agony in her eyes, the shadows that flickered in the background. If I could, I'd take her pain and make it my own. I'd swallow it like a bitter pill and live with the consequences.”

“She had never been to college, and I often wondered where her life would have led under different circumstances. She might have been a physician or an attorney, a CEO or a professor. Instead, she was stuck in Silvington, Indiana, married to a construction worker, and trying anything she could think of to save her child.”

“I could quote enough Nietzsche to bore someone into a coma, solve mathematical problems so beautiful they'd make Pythagoras cry; I could talk so much bullshit the listener didn't know if I was coming or going, but I had gotten to know Rickie well enough to realize that I had no idea how a woman's mind worked.”

“He'd put his brand on her and had sealed both their fates. What they shared was rare and beautiful and one taste would never be enough for either of them. A lifetime of loving wouldn't be enough!Gold help him. He didn't want to hurt the woman he loved. There had to be some way he could keep her family out of jail and still complete his mission!”