“Holding no hand is hard, but holding the wrong one is harder. My body, quite literally, has rejected him. He plants tumors in my mind and in my child-making bits. If I cannot trust him with my cervix, I cannot trust him with my heart.”

“Oh hell. I might not trust him with my heart but I really wanted to trust him with my body. Even if it was just this once.”

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”

“I sighed, sinking back, head filling with pleasant images; pictures Pietr floated to the surface. Kisses scorched along my face and neck. "Pietr...."There was a growl, and I felt fingers at the waistband of my jeans. The button opened and a hand traced along the top of my underpants."No," I said. The kissing resumed, harder. "Jessica." The word rumbled in someone's throat. Not Pietr's. To him, I was Jess."No," I insisted, trying to pry my eyes open. Something was wrong....Not Pietr... I pushed at the chest above me, my eyelids stinging as I willed them apart."Relax..." a voice said, lips dragging along the cornerof my jaw, filling my head with honey, sticky and sweet....”

“I lay on my stomach, reached down and poked him. He rolled up. Then, feeling safe, I suppose, he slowly unrolled. He travelled a few inches in his hundred legs and I touched him again. He rolled up. Feeling sleepy, I decided to end things. My hand was going down on him when Jem spoke.”

“To love the Lord my God with all my soul will involve a spiritual cost. I'll have to give Him my heart, and let Him love through it whom and how He wills, even if this seems at times to break my heart. To love the Lord my God with all my soul will involve a volitional and emotional cost. I'll have to give Him my will, my rights to decide and choose, and all my relationships, for Him to guide and control, even when I cannot understand His reasoning. To love the Lord my God with all my mind will involve an intellectual cost. I must give Him my mind, my intelligence, my reasoning powers, and trust Him to work through them, even when He may appear to act in contradiction to common sense. To love the Lord my God with all my strength will involve a physical cost. I must give Him my body to indwell, and through which to speak, whether He chooses health or sickness, by strength or weakness, and trust Him utterly with the outcome.”

“I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.”