“And I figured you'd drive a four-hour round-trip before giving up your car to someone else”

“Who else is going?" I asked.He shrugged. "Just you and me."My mood promptly shot up past 'cheerful' and went straight to 'estatic.' Me and Dimitri. Alone. In a car. This might very well be worth a surprise test."How far is it?" Silently, I begged for it to be a really long drive. Like, one that would take a week. And would involve us staying overnight in luxury hotels. Maybe we'd get stranded in a snowbank, and only body heat would keep us alive."Five hours""Oh."A bit less than I'd hoped for. Still, five hours was better than nothing. It didn't rule out the snowbank possibility, either.”

“You'd give up drinking to go see your dad?""Well, not permanently," he said. "That'd be ridiculous. But maybe I could switch to something slightly cheaper for a while. Like...slushes. Do you know how much I love those? Cherry, especially.”

“Why on earth would you buy a car like this if you can't drive a stick? There are dozens of cars--new cars--that have automatic transmission. It'd be a million times easier." Adrian shrugged. "I like the color. It matches my living room.”

“Well," he said, "I don't believe that either." "Believe what? That I messed up? Why not?""Weren't you just listening? I saw you in Spokane. Someone like you doesn't mess up freeze." I was about to give him the same line I had given the guardians, that killing Strigoi didn't make me invincible, but he cut me off: "Plus I saw your face out there.""Out.... on the quad?""Yeah," several more quite moments passed. "I don't know what happened, but the way you looked...that wasn't the look of someone trying to get back at a person. It wasn't the look of someone blanking out of Alto's attack either. It was something different...I don't know. But you were completely consumed by something else—and honestly? Your expression? Kind of scary.""Yet...you aren't giving me a hard time over that either.""Not my business. If it was big enough to take you over like that, then it must be serious. But if push comes to shove, I feel safe with you, Rose. I know you'd protect me if there really was a Strigoi there." He yawned. "Okay. Now that I have bared my soul, can we please go to bed? Maybe you don't need beauty sleep, but some of us aren't so lucky.”

“Oh," he said, knocking a red ball into a hole. "It's you.""You were expecting someone else?" I asked. "Am I interrupting your social calender?" I made a big show of glancing around the empty room. "I don't want to keep you from the mob of fans beating down your door.""Hey, a guy can hope. I mean, it's not impossible that a car full of scantily clad sorority girls might break down outside and need my help.”

“Sometimes you wake up from a dream. Sometimes you wake up in a dream. And sometimes, every once in a while, you wake up in someone else's dream. ”