“She glared at him. "You're doing it again.""What?""That thing that irritates me.""Smiling?""Yes. That.”

“If it's the lack of forbidden you're worried about. You could still forbid me to do things.""What kind of things?"She felt him smile against her mouth. "Things like this.”

“You are not afraid of me at all, are you?”Keely swallows. She is, but at this point, what does she have to lose? “No, I’m not. Irritated, infuriated, disgusted, yes. But afraid? No.”He leans forward again. “Those are passionate feelings.”She sighs. “Those are bad feelings.”

“What you're doing is building a horrible kind of logic. People read what you write and they say, 'Yes, he is talking about things that really happen,' and they keep reading, and it makes sense to them. You're explaining things that can't be defended, and the explanations themselves are mad, just bizarre — but you offer them with such confidence. It was because she kept the chain on the door; it was because he needed to let off steam after a hard day's scraping and bowing at work; it was because she was irritating and stupid; it was because she lied to him, made a fool of him; it was because she had to die, she just had to, it makes dramatic sense; it was because 'nothing is more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman'; it was because of this, it was because of that. It's obscene to make such things reasonable.”

“She glared at him. “I'm not weird like that. I'm good weird. I'm cool weird.” “Yes,” he said doubtfully. “Yes, you are.”

“Her eyes suddenly went round. "Hang on. You shoved him!""She shoved him?"I turned to glare at Nate."Yes. And she's always running off on him." Suki shook her head at me. "We'd treat him much better if he was ours-”