Fall On Your Knees Quotes

...you expect me to fall on my back with my legs spread." "Not necessarily. ... You can fall on your hands and knees if you prefer. Or against the wall. Or on the kitchen counter. I suppose I might let you be on top, if you make it worth my while.

One of the greatest myths in the world - & the phrase 'greatest myths' is just a fancy way of saying 'big fat lies' -- is that troublesome things get less & less troublesome if you do them more & more. People say this myth when they are teaching children to ride bicycles, for instance, as though falling off a bicycle & skinning your knee is less troublesome the fourteenth time you do it than it is the first time. The truth is that troublesome things tend to remain troublesome no matter how many times you do them, & that you should avoid doing them unless they are absolutely urgent.

Kitten…” “Hmm?” I fisted the covers. “Just making sure you’re still with me.” He kissed the side of my leg, right above my knee. “Don’t want you falling asleep or anything.” Like sleep was possible. Ever.

Are you kidding?” I stop in the middle of the kitchen. Spin around. My face is pulled together in disbelief. “You’ve spoken to me maybe once in the two weeks I’ve been here. I hardly even notice you anymore.” “Okay, hold up,” he says, turning to block my path. “We both know there’s no way you haven’t noticed all of this” — he gestures to himself — “so if you’re trying to play games with me, I should let you know up front that it’s not going to work.” “What?” I frown. “What are you talking abou—” “You can’t play hard to get, kid.” He raises an eyebrow. “I can’t even touch you. Takes ‘hard to get’ to a whole new level, if you know what I mean.” “Oh my God,” I mouth, eyes closed, shaking my head. “You are insane.” He falls to his knees. “Insane for your sweet, sweet love!

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.

Your father is only your father until one of you forgets. Like how the spine won't remember its wings no matter how many times our knees kiss the pavement. Ocean, are you listening? The most beautiful part of your body is wherever your mother's shadow falls.

Enough," Curran said. An unmistakable command saturated his voice. Jim clicked his mouth shut. I crossed my arms. "I'm sorry, is this the part where I fall to my knees and shiver in fear, Your Furriness? Silly me, I didn't get the memo.

Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

They are so young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them as they are.

Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?

When you stand at the abyss, you fall to your knees and you fucking grab for any comfort, any little thing to keep it from swallowing you whole.

Wade instantly falls on one knee. "Oh, dear maiden. Please allow me to insert my member into your cavern of pleasure and take you to heights only the immortals have known.

I remember I once saw this old movie...; in it the main character was talking about how sad it is that the last time you have sex you don't know it's the last time. Since I've never even had a first time, I'm not exactly an expert, but I'm guessing it's like that for most things in life--the last kiss, the last laugh, the last cup of coffee, the last sunset, the last time you jump through a sprinkler or eat an ice-cream cone, or stick your tongue out to catch a snowflake. You just don't know. But I think that's a good thing, really, because if you did know it would be almost impossible to let go. When you do know, it's like being asked to step off the edge of a cliff: all you want to do is get down on your hands and knees and kiss the solid ground, smell it, hold on to it.

Max," she said. He turned and briefly closed his eyes as the girl continued. There was once a strange, small man,"she said. Her arms were loose but her hands were fists at her side. "But there was a word shaker,too." One of the Jews on his way to Dachau had stopped walking now. He stood absolutely still as the others swerved morosely around him, leaving him completely alone. His eyes staggered, and it was so simple. The words were given across from the girl to the Jew. They climbed on to him. The next time she spoke, the questions stumbled from her mouth. Hot tears fought for room in her eyes as she would not let them out. Better to stand resolute and proud. Let the words do all of it. "Is it really you? the young man asked," she said. " Is it from your cheek that I took the seed.?" Max Vandenburg remained standing. He did not drop to his knees. People and Jews and clouds all stopped. They watched. As he stood, Max looked first at the girl and then stared directly into the sky who was wide and blue and magnificent. There were heavy beams-- planks of son-- falling randomly, wonderfully to the road. Clouds arched their backs to look behind as they started again to move on. "It's such a beautiful day," he said, and his voice was in many pieces. A great day to die. A great day to die,like this. Liesel walked at him. She was courageous enought to reach out and hold his bearded face. "Is it really you,Max?" Such a brilliant German day and its attentive crowd. He let his mouth kiss her palm. "Yes, Liesel, it's me," and he held the girl's hand in his face and cried onto her fingers. He cried as the soldiers came and a small collection of insolent Jews stood and watched.

Shane lowered his glasses on his nose and gave me his version of a severe stare. I leaned a little toward Luther. "Is this the part where I faint in fear?" Luther bit his lip. "He might also accept falling to your knees and holding your hands in humble supplication. Makes it easier for him to slap the cuffs on.

Lay down Your tired & weary head my friend. We have wept too long Night is falling And you are only sleeping We have come to this journey's end It's time for us to go To meet our friends Who beckon us To jump again From across a distant sky A C-130 comes to carry us Where we shall all wait For the final green light In the light of The pale moon rising I see far on the horizon Into the world of night and darkness Feet and knees together Time has ceased But cherished memories still linger This is the way of life and all things We shall meet again You are only sleeping.

God didn’t design your life so you would constantly fall down, but he does hope that you will be brought to your knees.

To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is.

Sometimes you want to fall on your knees and thank God in heaven for all the poor news reporting that goes on in the world.

I'm falling for you so hard that I can feel the scrapes on my knees as I'm brought to them. I understand you are scared because I'm absolutely terrified, but I'm not going to hurt you or kick you when you're down.

Finally, he pushed back the chair and exhaled. "He's alive," I said. "Your dad's alive." He loooked up at me and, I couldn't help it-- I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him. Then I realized what I was doing. I let go, backing away, tripping over my feet, stammering. "I-I'm sorry. I'm just--I'm happy for you." "I know." Still sitting, he reached out and pulled me toward him. We stayed there, looking at each other, his hand still wrapped around my shirt hem, my heart hammering so hard I wash sure he could hear it. "There's more," I said after a few seconds. "More emails, Tori said." He nodded and swiveled back to the computer, making room for me. When I inched closer, not wanting to intrude, he tugged me in front of him and I stumbled, half falling onto his lap. I tried to scramble up, cheeks burning, but he pulled me down onto his knee, one arm going around my waist, tentative, as if to say Is this okay? It was, even if my blood pounded in my ears so hard I couldn't think.

Because I think you're right. You can make a difference." He told me experiences were kind of like fate, and fate usually came in the form of a test. He told me fate liked to be worshiped. It liked to see us fall on out knees before it offered to help us up..." ♥

Dear Goat, How does one fall in love? Do you trip? Do you stumble, lose your balance and drop to the sidewalk, graze your knee, graze your heart? Do you crash to the stony ground? Is there a precipice, from which you float, over the edge, forever? I know I'm in love when I see you, I know when I long to see you. Not a muscle has moved. Leaves hang unruffled by any breeze. The air is still. I have fallen in love without taking step. When did this happen? I haven't even blinked. I'm on fire. Is that too banal for you? It's not, you know. You'll see. It's what happens. It's what matters. I'm on fire. I no longer eat, I forget to eat. Food looks silly to me, irrelevant. If I even notice it. But I notice nothing. My thoughts are full and raging, a house full of brothers, related by blood, feuding blood feuds: "I'm in love." "Typically stupid choice." "I am, though, I'm racked by love as if love were pain." "Go ahead. Fuck up your life. It's all wrong and you know it. Wake up. Face it." "There's only one face, it's all I see, awake or asleep." I threw the book out the window last night. I tried to forget. You are all wrong for me, I know it, but I no longer care for my thoughts unless they're thoughts of you. When I'm close to you, in your presence, I feel your hair brush my cheek when it does not. I look away from you, sometimes. Then I look back. When I tie my shoes, when I peel an orange, when I drive my car, when I lie down each night without you, I remain, As ever, Ram

I can’t help blushing and looking down at my feet. “It was nothing.” “It was literally everything to me.” I look up, putting on my best version of Eight’s teasing smile. “In that case, I think I deserve more than a gross hot dog.” Eight clasps his hands across his chest like I’ve wounded him. “You’re right! I’m a fool to think my life could be traded for a hot dog.” He grabs my hand and gets down on one knee, pressing his forehead to the back of my hand. “My savior, what can I ever do to repay you?

It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.

I always thought it would be a simple matter to lie wi' a woman, he said softly. And yet... I want to fall on my face at your feet and worship you"-he dropped the towel and reached out, taking me by the shoulders-"and still I want to force ye to your knees before me, and hold ye there wi' me hands tangled in your hair, and your mouth at my service...and I want both things at the same time, Sassenach.

How'd you get the burn?" Ignoring him only got me a barrage of chatter. "Yeah, how?" 'Did something, or someone, do it?" "You're bleeding." "It's her knee again." "She opened it up." "Did you fall?" "You've got grass in your hair." "Were you in a fight?" "How'd you get grass in your hair?" "I think she was in a fight." "Leaves and some dirt, too. And...is that a feather?" "You were in a fight with a bird?" "Hey, how did you manage to knock Blake down?" "She didn't knock me down! I caught her." "Hah! A little girl took you out." "Shut up or I'll take you out." "Her extreme velocity overcame Blake's superior mass." "I am superior." "How'd you get moving so fast?" I stopped abruptly and turned on them, arms gesturing wildly. "Shut up!

The thief you must fear the most is not the one who steals mere things.

the moon's too bright the chain's too tight the beast won't go to sleep. I've been thinking of those promises I made to you that I could not keep. I know a man never got a woman back by beggin on his knees, or I'd crawl to you baby and I'd fall at your feet I'd howl at your beauty like a dog in heat I'd tear at your heart I'd claw at your sheets And I'd say please. Please. I'm your man.

Lies like that are not a sin, they are a sacrifice.

What is the good of believing fervently in God if you wind up hating Him?

You think you're safe. Until you see a picture like that. And then you know you'll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened.

Everything in New York is a photograph. All the things that are supposed to be dirty or rough or unrefined are the most beautiful things. Garbage cans at the ends of alleyways look like they've been up all night talking with each other. Doorways with peeling paint look like the wise lines around an old feller's eyes. I stop and stare but can't stay because men always think I'm selling something. Or worse, giving something away. I wish I could be invisible. Or at least I wish I didn't look like someone they want to look at. They stop being part of the picture, they get up from their chess game and come out of the frame at me, blocking my view.

Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, 'Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here.' She's been too young to realize that he was talking to her brother.

She learns a valuable lesson: if you think you are good, just try doing good. You’ll soon find out how inadequate your little drop of goodness is.

Let your knees fall open,” he demanded. “I—” “No arguments, Osha. I've driven myself half-crazy wondering what you look like. I need to fucking see. Put me out of my misery.

This phrase did not have the ring of verisimilitude because I am famously bad at math. If I'm in charge of tipping at a restaurant, the waiter will either fall to his knees in gratitude or slash my tires. There ain't no Mr. In Between.

Are you going to go down on your knees and beg for your life, old one?" Abbot Mortimer stared calmly into Cluny's savage eye. "I will never bend my knee on my own behalf. However, if I thought I could save the life of one of my friends I would gladly fall down on both knees. But I know you, Cluny, better than you know yourself. There is not a scrap of pity or mercy in your heart, only a burning desire for vengeance. Therefore, I will not kneel to one who is consumed by evil.

I’m awful about your name. I still jump when I hear it. I still feel it rattling somewhere in my stomach. I think I’m jealous of anyone that gets to say it because it’s not my right anymore. Years from now I’ll be standing in a supermarket and someone will casually brush past me, your name falling from their mouth like confetti. I’ll drop everything that I’m holding. My knees will wobble in the way they only did when I was with you. Years from now I’ll still remember how your name tasted in my mouth and I’ll have to start missing you all over again.

... but I could also write about love. How a hand can silence thousands of voices and how someone’s smell can make you feel at home even though you’re a million miles away from home and have you ever hurt someone you love? Because you’re angry. Because you’re disappointed and sad and you just really wanted to love and be loved in return but life got in the way and you both said things that should never be said and you’re angry but don’t know how to. Because you still feel this strange love for him, but you’re also fucking angry and you want to hit him, but then hug him because hurting him is hurting yourself, and then hit him again because you’re angry! and so you fall on your knees because you’re hopeless to yourself and your own emotions and that’s love, my friend.

You must learn to call on the Lord. Don’t sit all alone or lie on the couch, shaking your head and letting your thoughts torture you. Don’t worry about how to get out of your situation or brood about your terrible life, how miserable you feel, and what a bad person you are. Instead, say, “Get a grip on yourself, you lazy bum! Fall on your knees, and raise your hands and eyes toward heaven. Read a psalm. Say the Lord’s Prayer, and tearfully tell God what you need.

It wasn't you're fault," I whisper. And then out of self-protection more than anything else, I bring the glory. I don't warn him or anything. I don't damp it down. I bring it. The room fills with light. "This is what I am," I say, my hair ablaze around my head. He squints at me. his jaw juts out a little in pure stubbornness. He stands his ground "I know," he says. I take a step towards him, close the space between us, put my glowing hand against his cheek. He starts to tremble. "This is what I am," I say again and my wings are out now. His knees wobble, but he fights it. He puts his hand at my waist, turns me, pulls me closer, which surprises me. "I can accept that," he whispers, and holds his breath, and leans in to kiss me His lips brush mine for an instant, and an emotion like victory tears through him, but he pulls away and glances at the front door. Groans. Christian is standing in the doorway. "Wow," Tucker says, trying to grin. "You really know how to cramp a guy's style." His legs give out. He falls to his knees. My light blinks off.

My first advantage: I have everything. My second advantage: this is just another island. My third advantage: I am bigger than it all.

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear, we should not judge.

... You did what none of us could do.” “Only because the poison didn’t affect me the same way—” “Does that matter? We couldn’t do it. You did. We saw what you looked like when you got out. How many times did you fall in order to batter your knees like that? But you kept going.” “That makes me stubborn, not strong,” she mumbled. “Strength comes in many forms...

I cry out and fall to my knees, unable to go on, weeping for the dead, weeping for the cruelties, and a whisper calls to me from far away, You are strong, Stronger than your pain, Stronger than your grief, Stronger than them. And I force myself to my feet again.

Kiss me a question, ask me again with your eyes and I’ll answer with my fingers, trailing reasons down your spine. There’s a theory behind your knees and a postulate in that sweet spot on your neck, and I’ll respond to your query with a smooch and a holler, roll you up against the sink and wash your hair, make love til the plates fall off the shelf.

She is why purgatory was invented.

TO YOUR KNEES Life will eventually bring you to your knees. Either you’ll be on your knees cursing the universe and begging for a different life, or you’ll be brought to your knees by gratitude and awe, deeply embracing the life that you have, too overwhelmed by the beauty of it all to stand or even speak. Either way, they’re the same knees.

You expect me to fall on my back with my legs spread." "Not necessarily. ... You can fall on your hands and knees if you prefer. Or against the wall. Or on the kitchen counter. I suppose I might let you be on top, if you make it worth my while.

If at eighty you're not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin' and keepin' power. If you are young in years but already weary in spirit, already on your way to becoming an automaton, it may do you good to say to your boss - under your breath, of course - "Fuck you, Jack! you don't own me." If you can whistle up your ass, if you can be turned on by a fetching bottom or a lovely pair of teats, if you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from going sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you've got it half licked.

But I have discovered something about modest people. They're just waiting for the call. Then they are the first over the wall and into the temple.

He would have enough money...for a family that would fill his house with beautiful music and the silence of good books.

Catherine. " She swept by me without a hug. Okay, that was familiar, too. "You really should wear something warmer, it's freezing out. " Hello to you, too, Mom. Or whoever the hell you are, because you sure don't look like the woman who raised me. 123 "You should talk, " I managed. "I can see all the way up to your thigh. My God, if Grandma saw you now, she'd come right out of her grave!" My mother opened her mouth, paused, and then smiled. "I won't tell if you won't. " I was going directly to the kitchen to fall to my knees in awe before Rodney. Lo and behold, he'd managed to give her a sense of humor, and here I'd figured that would take voodoo, several headless chickens, and a lot of gris-gris.

God, the three of you. When I wake up on Saturday mornings--late you always let me sleep in--I come looking for you, and you're in the backyard with dirt on your knees and two little girls spinning around you in perfect orbit. And you put their hair in pigtails, and you let them wear whatever madness they want, and Alice planted a fruit cocktail tree, and Noomi ate a butterfly, and they look like me because they're round and golden, but the glow for you. And you built us a picnic table. And you learned to bake bread. And you've painted a mural on ever west-facing wall. And it isn't all bad, I promise. I swear to you. You might not be actively, thoughtfully happy 70 to 80 percent of the time, but maybe you wouldn't be anyway. And even when you're sad, Neal--even when you're falling asleep at the other side of the bed--I think you're happy, too. About some things. About a few things.

The path of destiny pulls you forward. It exhumes you from a state of being and propels you towards the juncture you were created for. A new frontier that you are forced to tread with a cross on your back, heavy as a boulder. When you fall to your knees at the hands of your betrayer, you can only hope to find the one sent to carry your burden -- shoulder the journey towards your final punishment. Sometimes duplicity and treason are markers of the enemy, and sometimes the failed intention of a masterful ally.

Having experienced her own disappearance, she is conscious of how important it is for people to be seen, so when she looks at them --even the blind one--she also looks for them, just in case they too have got lost and need finding.

I began to understand that my life was measured in moments.There were moments that tested you, challenged you, and moments that could make you fall to your knees, begging for one more moment but you see, those moments defined you as a person. You need to take them as they come because before you know it, you're out of moments.

He thought his heart would kill him, he'd had no clue what it was capable of.

Fall on your knees and we'll let you live! A bit.

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.” ― Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees

Winter’s head snapped around, away from Scarlet. Scarlet’s pace slowed, dread pulsing through her as she, too, heard the footsteps. Pounding footsteps, like someone was running at full speed toward them. She reached for the knife Jacin had given her. A man barrelled around the corner, heading straight for the princess. Winter tensed half a second before he reached her. Grabbing Winter’s elbow, he yanked back the red hood. Scarlet gasped. Her knees weakened. The man stared at Winter with a mixture of confusion and disappointment and maybe even anger, all locked up in eyes so vividly green that Scarlet could see them glowing from here. She was the one hallucinating now. She took a stumbling, uncertain step forward. Wanting to run toward him, but terrified it was a trick. Her hand tightened around the knife handle as Wolf, ignoring how Winter was trying to pull away, grabbed her arm and smelled the filthy red sleeve of Scarlet’s hoodie, streaked with dirt and blood. He growled, ready to tear the princess apart. “Where did you get this?” So desperate, so determined, so him. The knife slipped out of Scarlet’s hand. Wolf’s attention snapped to her. “Wolf?” she whispered. His eyes brightened, wild and hopeful. Releasing Winter, he strode forward. His tumultuous eyes scooped over her. Devoured her. When he was in arm’s reach, Scarlet almost collapsed into him, but at the last moment she had the presence of mind to step back. She planted a hand on his chest. Wolf froze, hurt flickering across his face. “I’m sorry,” said Scarlet, her voice teetering with exhaustion. “It’s just…I smell so awful, I can hardly stand to be around myself right now, so I can’t even imagine what it’s like for you with your sense of sm-“ Batting her hand away, Wolf dug his fingers into Scarlet’s hair and crushed his mouth against hers. Her protests died with a muffled gasp. This time, she did collapse, her legs unable to hold her a second longer. Wolf fell with her, dropping his knees to break Scarlet’s fall and cradling her body against his. He was here. He was here.

I do want to remake the world so that I can be with you. So that I can get down on my knees and ask you to be my wife. So that I can put a crown on your head and make you my queen. So I can build a shrine and worship you as my goddess. I want all of these things, yet I face a future with none of them, and I don't know whether I want to fall on my own blade or burn everything to ash because I do not want to let you go.

I plummeted into chaos because your love was everything beautiful and pure, but my love was everything deceitful and destructive. So, I didn’t just fall in love with you, Killian. I crawled, on my knees, bleeding for you. So, it was real. Every moment, every smile, every kiss… it was real and it hurt.

You fall in love with someone not because he's nice to you or can read your mind but because, when he kisses you, your knees weaken, or because you can't stop looking at his skin or at the way his legs, inside his jeans, shape the fabric.

Under a smoky streetlamp I stood face to face with my beloved and pricked my fingers against the diamond studs of her immaculate shirt front. Being tall, she slipped her hands naturally about my hips and pulled me close. And being bold, I put my mouth on hers and this time went inside and told her all the things I’d been longing to. Dark and sweet, the elixir of love is in her mouth. The more I drink, the more I remember all the things we’ve never done. I was a ghost until I touched you. Never swallowed mortal food until I tasted you, never understood the spoken word until I found your tongue. I’ve been a sleep-walker, sad somnambula, hands outstretched to strike the solid thing that could awaken me to life at last. I have only ever stood here under this lamp, against your body, I’ve missed you all my life.

Books were not an expense; they were an investment.

I hope one day you’ll fall in love,” Lydia muttered, barely audibly. “And that person will bring you to your knees.” Tristan

An unhappily married woman is necessarily a bad cook.

As for sin. I honestly can't believe God is so bored or so lecherous as to care how close my body and its various parts get to someone else's various parts.

I am burning. I have to live, I have to sing, I want to transform myself into a thousand different characters and carry their life with me onto the stage where it's so bright and so dark at the same time, just knowing there are three thousand people out there longing to be swept away by the passion that's about to flood out from scarlet curtains, to this I consecrate my body and my soul, I can give no more than all of myself, I feel my heart is a throbbing engine and my voice is the valve, like a wailing train, it has to sing or blow up, there's too much fuel, too much fire, and what am I to do with this voice if I can't let it out, it's not just singing. I am here as a speck, but I don't feel scared or about to be blown away, I feel like all New York is a warm embrace just waiting to enfold me. I am in love. But not with a person. I am passionately in love with my life.

1. WE'VE LEFT SHORE SOMEHOW BECOME THE FRIENDS OF EARLY THEORY CLOSE ENOUGH TO SPEAK DESIRE AND PAIN OF ABSENCE OF MISTAKES WE'D MAKE GIVEN THE CHANCE. EACH SMILE RETURNED MAKES HARDER AVOIDING DREAMS THAT SEE US LYING IN EARLY EVENING CURTAIN SHADOWS, SKIN SAFE AGAINST SKIN. BLOOM OF COMPASSION RESPECT FOR MOMENTS EYES LOCK TURNS FOREVER INTO ONE MORE VEIL THAT FALLS AWAY. 2. THIS AFTER SEEING YOU LAST NIGHT, FIRST TIME SMELLING YOU WITH PERMISSION: SHOULDERS TO WONDER OPENLY AT AS CAREFULLY KISSED AS THOSE ARMS WAITED IMPOSSIBLY ON. THEY'VE HELD ME NOW AND YOUR BREATH DOWN MY BACK SENT AWAY NIGHT AIR THAT HAD ME SHAKING IN THE UNLIT ANGLICAN DOORWAY. 3. ARE WE RUINED FOR FINDING OUR FACES FIT AND WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT MORNING? IS FRIENDSHIP CANCELLED IF WE CAN'T CALL EACH OTHER ANYMORE IN AMNESIA, INVITE OURSELVES TO LAST GLANCES UNDER SUSPICIOUS CLOCKS TELLING US WHEN WE'VE HAD ENOUGH? 4. YOUR STEADY HANDS CRADLING MY GRATEFUL SKULL: WERE YOU TAKING IN MY FACE TO SAVE AN IMAGE YOU'VE RARELY ALLOWED YOURSELF AFTER LEAVING THAT COLD ALCOVE? AM I A PHOTOGRAPH YOU GAZE AT IN MOMENTS OF WEAKNESS? YOU ORDERED ME OFF MY KNEES INTO YOUR ARMS. WASN'T TO BEG THAT I KNELT; ONLY TO SEE YOU ONCE FROM BELOW. TRIED TO SAY SOMETHING THAT FILLED MY MOUTH AND LONGED TO REST IN YOUR EAR. DON'T DARE WRITE IT DOWN FOR FEAR IT'LL BECOME WORDS, JUST WORDS.

It's his last thrill and his last sting of love, as fresh and painful as youth transplanted over time and an ocean. There is nothing left for him now except to die, but that will take a while because he is a creature of habit, and he has got into the habit of being alive.

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear we should not judge. We should just say, poor Camille, she turned into a bitch the way most people would have—and stay out of her way.

She wonders when it was that she began to despair. All these years she mistook it for pious resignation. Now she sees the difference. Such a fine line between a state of grace and a state of mortal sin. What is the good of believing fervently in God if you wind up hating Him?

Alex: OK, that sounds like a challenge! Well firstly, I would have brought you to a hotel along the coast so that your suite would have the best sea view in the hotel. You could fall asleep listening to the waves crashing against the rocks, I would sprinkle the bed with red rose petals and have candles lit all around the room, I would have your favorite CD playing quietly in the background. But I wouldn’t propose to you there. I would bring you to where there was a huge crowd of people so they could all gasp when I got down on one knee and proposed. Or something like that. Note I have italicized all important buzz words. Rosie: Oh. Alex: Oh? That’s all you can say? One word for the most important night of our lives?

I began to understand that my life was measured in moments. There were moments that tested you, challenged you, and moments that could make you fall to your knees, begging for one more moment but you see, those moments defined you as a person. You need to take them as they come because before you know it, you're out of moments.

Gone I met your mother while she was standing on the beach, her feet buried in the sand. I regret not falling to my knees to scoop up some of the granules into the palms of my hands. I wonder if any of what we touch has ever been stepped on by her feet. Or has every grain of sand she ever came across already washed back out to sea?

He's a very nice man and all that, easy to get along with, fun, he never makes me cry. But is that love? I mean, is that all there is to it? Even when you learned to ride your two-wheeler, you had to fall off a few times and scrape both knees. Call it a rite of passage. And that was just a little thing.

So if you're trying to play games with me, I should let you know up front that it's not going to work. "What?" I frown "what are you talking abou-" "You can't play hard to get, kid." He raises his eyebrow. "I can't even touch you. Takes 'hard to get' to a whole new level, if you know what I mean." "Oh my god," I mouth, eyes closed, shaking my head. "You are insane." He falls to his knees. "Insane for your sweet, sweet love!" "Kenji" I can't lift my eyes because I'm afraid to look around, but I'm desperate for him to stop talking. To put an entire room between us at all times. I know he's joking, but I might be the only one. "What?" he says, his voice booming around the room. "Does my love embarass you?" "Please-please get up-and lower your voice-" "Hell no." "Why not?" I'm pleading now. "Because if I lower my voice, I won't be able to hear myself speak. And that," He says, "Is my faviorite part." I can't even look at him. "Don't deny my Juliette I'm a lonely man." What is wrong with you?" "You're breaking my heart." His voice is even louder now,

Frances is a diamond, passed from filthy paw to paw but never diminished. The men who handle her can leave no mark because her worth is far above them. (page 361)

One day, I'll sit down with all my books around me, and just start reading.

But I think that's a good thing, really, because if you did know it would be almost impossible to let go. When you do know, it's like being asked to step off a cliff: all you want to do is get down on your hands and knees and kiss the solid ground, smell it, hold on to it.:

I suppose you think you know what autumn looks like. Even if you live in the Los Angeles dreamed of by September’s schoolmates, you have surely seen postcards and photographs of the kind of autumn I mean. The trees go all red and blazing orange and gold, and wood fires burn at night so everything smells of crisp branches. The world rolls about delightedly in a heap of cider and candy and apples and pumpkins and cold stars rush by through wispy, ragged clouds, past a moon like a bony knee. You have, no doubt, experienced a Halloween or two. Autumn in Fairyland is all that, of course. You would never feel cheated by the colors of a Fairyland Forest or the morbidity of a Fairyland moon. And the Halloween masks! Oh, how they glitter, how they curl, how their beaks and jaws hook and barb! But to wander through autumn in Fairyland is to look into a murky pool, seeing only a hazy reflection of the Autumn Provinces’ eternal fall. And human autumn is but a cast-off photograph of that reflecting pool, half burnt and drifting through the space between us and Fairyland. And so I may tell you that the leaves began to turn red as September and her friends rushed through the suddenly cold air on their snorting, roaring high wheels, and you might believe me. But no red you have ever seen could touch the crimson bleed of the trees in that place. No oak gnarled and orange with October is half as bright as the boughs that bent over September’s head, dropping their hard, sweet acorns into her spinning spokes. But you must try as hard as you can. Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel to mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.

Adelaide believes that all children should have enough grown-ups around who love them so that one can tell them to fight, one can tell them not to, and one can tell them not to worry so much.

United we stand, divided we fall Just watch us as we beat ya’ll. You say ‘brother against brother’? Well, my brother screwed your mother And she liked it! We’ll kick your shins and break your knee ’Cause all you got is Robert E. Lee. Farbs!

Tyrion turned to his nephew. “Joffrey, it is past time you called on Lord Eddard and his lady, to offer them your comfort.” Joffrey looked as petulant as only a boy prince can look. “What good will my comfort do them?” “None,” Tyrion said. “Yet it is expected of you. Your absence has been noted.” “The Stark boy is nothing to me,” Joffrey said. “I cannot abide the wailing of women.” Tyrion Lannister reached up and slapped his nephew hard across the face. The boy’s cheek began to redden. “One word,” Tyrion said, “and I will hit you again.” “I’m going to tell Mother!” Joffrey exclaimed. Tyrion hit him again. Now both cheeks flamed. “You tell your mother,” Tyrion told him. “But first you get yourself to Lord and Lady Stark, and you fall to your knees in front of them, and you tell them how very sorry you are, and that you are at their service if there is the slightest thing you can do for them or theirs in this desperate hour, and that all your prayers go with them. Do you understand?

Some moments in your life you wish never happened; you would do anything to take them back. They make you realize you are not all-powerful. That there is a force stronger than you at work. In those moments, you fall to your knees and abdicate all sense of power. Offer your hand and ask for help. If you are lucky, you will feel the touch of something or someone to help you rise. If not, you stay kneeling, left all alone.

Her head was full of thoughts. She managed to walk a little way and then sat down, hugging her knees. Imagine getting stuck like this, she thought. You'd have to wear earplugs and noseplugs and a big black hood over your head, and still you'd see and hear too much... She closed her eyes, and closed her eyes again. She felt it all draining away. It was like falling asleep, sliding from that strange wide-awakeness into just normal, everyday... well, being awake. It felt as if everything was blurred and muffled. This is how we always feel. she thought. We sleepwalk through our lives, because how could we live if we were always this awake?

No,” I hear myself say. “You’re not supposed to be here.” She’s sitting on my bed. She’s leaning back on her elbows, legs outstretched in front of her, crossed at the ankles. And while some part of me understands I must be dreaming, there’s another, overwhelmingly dominant part of me that refuses to accept this. Part of me wants to believe she’s really here, inches away from me, wearing this short, tight black dress that keeps slipping up her thighs. But everything about her looks different, oddly vibrant; the colors are all wrong. Her lips are a richer, deeper shade of pink; her eyes seem wider, darker. She’s wearing shoes I know she’d never wear. And strangest of all: she’s smiling at me. “Hi,” she whispers. It’s just one word, but my heart is already racing. I’m inching away from her, stumbling back and nearly slamming my skull against the headboard, when I realize my shoulder is no longer wounded. I look down at myself. My arms are both fully functional. I’m wearing nothing but a white T-shirt and my underwear. She shifts positions in an instant, propping herself up on her knees before crawling over to me. She climbs onto my lap. She’s now straddling my waist. I’m suddenly breathing too fast. Her lips are at my ear. Her words are so soft. “Kiss me,” she says. “Juliette—” “I came all the way here.” She’s still smiling at me. It’s a rare smile, the kind she’s never honored me with. But somehow, right now, she’s mine. She’s mine and she’s perfect and she wants me, and I’m not going to fight it. I don’t want to. Her hands are tugging at my shirt, pulling it up over my head. Tossing it to the floor. She leans forward and kisses my neck, just once, so slowly. My eyes fall closed. There aren’t enough words in this world to describe what I’m feeling. I feel her hands move down my chest, my stomach; her fingers run along the edge of my underwear. Her hair falls forward, grazing my skin, and I have to clench my fists to keep from pinning her to my bed. Every nerve ending in my body is awake. I’ve never felt so alive or so desperate in my life, and I’m sure if she could hear what I’m thinking right now, she’d run out the door and never come back. Because I want her. Now. Here. Everywhere. I want nothing between us. I want her clothes off and the lights on and I want to study her. I want to unzip her out of this dress and take my time with every inch of her. I can’t help my need to just stare; to know her and her features: the slope of her nose, the curve of her lips, the line of her jaw. I want to run my fingertips across the soft skin of her neck and trace it all the way down. I want to feel the weight of her pressed against me, wrapped around me. I can’t remember a reason why this can’t be right or real. I can’t focus on anything but the fact that she’s sitting on my lap, touching my chest, staring into my eyes like she might really love me. I wonder if I’ve actually died. But just as I lean in, she leans back, grinning before reaching behind her, never once breaking eye contact with me. “Don’t worry,” she whispers. “It’s almost over now.” Her words seem so strange, so familiar. “What do you mean?” “Just a little longer and I’ll leave.” “No.” I’m blinking fast, reaching for her. “No, don’t go—where are you going—” “You’ll be all right,” she says. “I promise.” “No—” But now she’s holding a gun. And pointing it at my heart.

He’s… There are no perfect words for what I feel. For what I see. It’s staring at a Michelangelo painting and being intimate with the subject beneath the brush strokes. It’s falling to your knees and looking up at a god, who belongs to you.

Prayer:  The act of falling to your knees in pleading fashion, seeking help from a greater power than all else to have failed you previously.

It's where she belongs, she craves the caress of the violent shore, to come alive like that once more in a clash of stone and then to die.

Why?" he asked instead. "Why do such things when my death would have benefited you far more?" Yhalen bent over his knees, resting forehead on his forearm, perhaps not willing to answer, or not able to, strange creature that he was. "Is that the way your people think?" he asked finally, as he turned his head to peer up at Bloodraven through the thick fall of the hair around his face. "That death is more beneficial than life?

Only someone wicked could make me want to fall to my knees before her and pledge my loyalty to her with my tongue. My family be damned.” “I haven’t asked for your loyalty, Evren.” “No?” He stepped even closer to me and ran his knuckles along my hand. “You’ve simply demanded it of me with every breath you take.

Punish me for my atrocious pride,” she said to him, squeezing him in her arms as though to strangle him; “you are my master, I am your slave, I must beg pardon upon my knees for having sought to rebel.” She slipped from his embrace to fall at his feet. “Yes, you are my master,” she said again, intoxicated with love and joy; “reign over me for ever, punish your slave severely when she seeks to rebel.

Humility. Seek it within yourself, be as sceptical of your own superiority as your intellect is sceptical of the superiority of things other than itself. Turn your critical faculties inward, with ruthless diligence, and by that you will understand the true meaning of courage. It is the kind of courage that sees you end up on your knees, but with the will to rise once more, to begin it all over again.

Think of friends or family members who loved Jesus and are with him now. Picture them with you, walking together in this place. All of you have powerful bodies, stronger than those of an Olympic decathlete. You are laughing, playing, talking, and reminiscing. You reach up to a tree to pick an apple or orange. You take a bite. It’s so sweet that it’s startling. You’ve never tasted anything so good. Now you see someone coming toward you. It’s Jesus, with a big smile on his face. You fall to your knees in worship. He pulls you up and embraces you.

Must we always be warned, and can we only fall on our knees when some one is there to tell us that God is passing by? If you have loved profoundly you have needed no one to tell you that your soul was a thing as great in itself as the world; that the stars, the flowers, the waves of night and sea were not solitary; that it was on the threshold of appearances that everything began, but nothing ended, and that the very lips you kissed belonged to a creature who was loftier, much purer, and much more beautiful than the one whom your arms enfolded.

You know how there are a key few moments in your life that stand out, like, your first kiss, and the first time you realise your parents are just people too and hearing Coldplay’s “The Scientist” for the first time and falling over and really fucking up your knee, like your first hospital visit, all that shit—meeting Parks is one of them for me.

I nod and tap my fingers against my knees. “What to do with a girlfriend while I work my hours at the TOG. Hmm…Can I really do this? Will I be able to pull it off? Will she be able to read at the snack bar tables without losing her mind,” I mumble. “Do you always talk to yourself?” “Yes. Bad habit. Does it bother you?” I walk back over to her side of the small stage. “No. It's interesting. I hate people knowing my thoughts. But yours just fall out of your head so easily.” She shrugs. “I never thought of it like that…but you're my girlfriend now…so who cares if you know what I think?” Her cheeks turn pink, and I laugh.

If I could hold your heart I would keep it safe. Even when I trip and fall, and even when I break down, I would hold your heart close to mine, so it doesn't see the same damage. When I bruise my knees and scrape my palms you'll never have to fear, and even if I cry, I promise, you won't need to shed a tear. Love is everlasting. Loyalty is intertwined with faith. As long as you want me I will be here, standing with my palms out, waiting with my heart plain in my eyes, and a smile on my face.

I On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping White Ophelia floats like a great lily; Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils... - In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort. For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river. For more than a thousand years her sweet madness Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze. The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath Her great veils rising and falling with the waters; The shivering willows weep on her shoulder, The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow. The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her; At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder, Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings; - A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars. II O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow! Yes child, you died, carried off by a river! - It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom. It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair, Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind; It was your heart listening to the song of Nature In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights; It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar, That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft; It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman Who one April morning sate mute at your knees! Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl! You melted to him as snow does to a fire; Your great visions strangled your words - And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye! III - And the poet says that by starlight You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.

you can’t ever be broken. You are a hero, and even though you might fall to your knees on a bathroom floor under the pressure of it all, you will rise, like a phoenix from the ashes, and you will stay true to the integrity of your calling.

Being strong means allowing yourself to cry over the things you can't change; laugh when things are funny; smile when you're happy. It means understanding where your breaking point is, and yet, going further and still remaining whole. Strong people push themselves to the limits of pain and joy. They fall to their knees in agony, then they lift up their faces to find the beautiful morning rays shining down on them, and they rise to their feet. Being strong means never giving up, no matter how crushed you are, and finding happiness in the smallest parts of life.

By fall, they can read. It happened by osmosis, the way it ought to: after they have spent several months on Daddy's lap, following his spoken words with their eyes and pretending to read, their comes a day when they no longer have to pretend.

Kiss me a question, ask me again with your eyes and I'll answer with my fingers, trailing reasons down your spine. There's a theory behind your knees and a postulate in that sweet spot on your neck, and I'll respond to your query with a smooch and a holler, roll you up against the sink and wash your hair, make love till the plates fall off the shelf

Though you wear your fingers to the bone with service, weep your eyes out with repentance, make your knees hard with kneeling, and dry your throat with shouting, if your heart does not beat with love, your religion falls to the ground like a withered leaf in autumn.

Lately I have been feeling hulihudu. And everything around me seemed to be heimongmong. These were words I had never thought about in English terms. I suppose the closest in meaning would be "confused" and "dark fog." But really, the words mean much more than that. Maybe they can't be easily translated because they refer to a sensation that only Chinese people have, as if you were falling headfirst through Old Mr. Chou's [Mr. Sandman's] door, then trying to find your way back. But you're so scared you can't open your eyes, so you get on your hands and knees and grope in the dark, listening for voices to tell you which way to go. I had been talking to too may people...to each person I told a different story. Yet each version was true, I was certain of it, at least at the moment I told it.

Now, relax your thighs,” he instructed. “Spread ’em wide and let them fall to the bed, okay? Open for me. Just open.” I laid down my thighs, knees bent and spread for him.

The moon may drive men mad but it can calm a savage girl, for it is cool, precise, it is lucid.

She ran right into his arms and he swung her around like a little kid, laughing, and then they hugged. He thought his heart would kill him, he'd had no clue what it was capable of.

Jetzt bleibt ihm nur noch er Tod, doch der lässt auf sich warten, weil Mahmoud ein Gewohnheitstier ist und sich daran ewöhnt hat, am Leben zu sein.

When you die, little Devil, a kingdom will fall to its knees and crawl to your bier. In a thousand years and a thousand after that, they will still sing of the Prince and his Devil.

...the world is coloured rather than stained by such beliefs,and accepting another's values is far more Christian than falling to your knees every time you see a stained glass window.

Dalinar tried to stand, straight-backed and at atention, beneath the weight of it all. Unfortunately, he knew too well that if you locked your knees and stood too straight, you risked fainting. Why was it that trying to stand tall should make you so much more likely to fall?

It isn't pretty, he wanted to say, it's lonely, it's desolate, it's a chilling portrait of vastness. How ignorant are you to look at this and diminish it to some kind of trinket, are you dead? It's the human condition! It's the entire universe itself! It's the depths of spacetime you utter fucking philistine and how dare you, how fucking dare you stand there and fail to weep? What kind of sad, unremarkable nothingness have you so callously lived that you can witness the splendor of her existence and not fall to your knees for having missed it, for having misunderstood it all this time? Pretty, that's what you think this is? You think that's all she's capable of? You fool, she's done the impossible. She has explained everything there is to know about the world in less than the time it took for your eyes to filly focus, and do you realize that I will spend a lifetime trying to do the same never come close? This is an opus!, this is a triumph!, this is the meaning of life and you would think the answer would be satire, but it isn't, its Truth. She told the Truth like you could never dream of telling it, and I pity you, that you could see the inside of your own soul and reduce it like this, so pitilessly. So carelessly. With the vacuous deficiency of, Oh, this is pretty.

I'm fat," she blurted out. "You are not fat. You're the most beautiful, voluptuous woman I know." His eyes moved down her body, deliberately, slowly, then back up to her face. What she saw in them sent fire squirming through her stomach and lower. "I want every inch of you," he said, growling it. "I want to fall on my knees and worship at your hips." He reach out, shaped her curves from breast to hips with a burning sweep of his hand that a man was allowed to give only his wife.

know,” she said, and he believed her. “You’re all capable of such great and terrible things. And in such a short amount of time. You are surrounded by millions of those like you, yet you can still feel alone. You’re so angry and powerful and wonderful. And so fragile. You can break into pieces and feel so lost. I didn’t get that. Not … before. I don’t think any of us did. You’re complex and yet so simple at the same time. It’s a dichotomy that shouldn’t be possible. When you smile, it’s like the sun is out. When you cry, it’s like you’re trapped in shadows and you can’t find your way back to the light. You can hold a gun to your enemy’s head and pull the trigger in the name of what you call God. You drop bombs and scorch the ground beneath your feet. You hurt each other. You love each other. You scream words that fall on deaf ears. You hate that others aren’t like you. They scare you, even though they want nothing more than to be you. You make yourselves a home out of nothing. You carry each other until your knees give out and you stumble. It’s almost impossible to understand. None of us could get that. Not until they felt a heart beating in a chest like I have. Not until I felt the bones beneath my skin. We’re not alike. Not really. We’re separated by time and space. And yet, somehow, we’re all made of dust and stars. I think we’d forgotten that. And I don’t know if you ever knew that to begin with. How can you be alone when we’re all the same?” Nate blinked away the burn in his eyes.

When I was young I walked all over this country, east and west, and saw no other people than the Apaches. After many summers I walked again and found another race of people had come to take it. How is it? Why is it that the Apaches wait to die—that they carry their lives on their fingernails. They roam over the hills and plains and want the heavens to fall on them. The Apaches were once a great nation; they are now but few, and because of this they want to die and so carry their lives on their fingernails. Many have been killed in battle. You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight to our hearts. Tell me, if the Virgin Mary has walked throughout all the land, why has she never entered the wickiups of the Apaches? Why have we never seen or heard her? “I have no father nor mother; I am alone in the world. No one cares for Cochise; that is why I do not care to live, and wish the rocks to fall on me and cover me up. If I had a father and mother like you, I would be with them and they with me

When you find yourself falling into the pit of anxiety, remember the ladder of hope that reminds you there is no reason to be afraid. There is still a way out of this, and you are still capable—not perfect, but capable—and you have permission to try to climb again. Even if your hands shake, and your knees are weaker from the fall, you can still trade your fears of tomorrow with hope for today: the courageous decision to climb on anyway out of the pit of anxious thoughts. There is no reason to live afraid.

December, 1919 Last night I heard your voice, mother, The words you sang to me When I, a little barefoot boy, Knelt down against your knee. And tears gushed from my heart, mother, And passed beyond its wall, But though the fountain reached my throat The drops refused to fall. 'Tis ten years since you died, mother, Just ten dark years of pain, And oh, I only wish that I Could weep just once again.

The path of destiny pulls you forward. It exhumes you from a state of being and propels you towards the juncture you were created for. A new frontier that you are forced to tread with a cross on your back, heavy as a boulder. When you fall to your knees at the hands of your betrayer, you can only hope to find the one sent to carry you burden- shoulder the journey towards your final punishment. Sometimes duplicity and treason are markers of the ememy, and sometimes, the failed intention of a masterful ally. But, nevertheless, as they burden you with a vexing brand of love, they become nothing more than the kisdd of Judas, pressing a crown of thorns into your flesh. Seemingly with out reason- vastly disappointing, Although I am submerged in violent water, I will rise above. My enemies, my friends, are incapable of derailing me from destiny’s design. So, I press forward-move-rely on the hope of the future- create the possible out of the impossible as I weave into life’s grand tapestry. I believe in the things that wait for me- my enemies, my friends- most of all love. It is the finish line I hunger for, the promise of love in all of its glory. I can endure all things in the hold name of love. And I will.

Captain Azia,” he said, introducing himself. “The entire Dalbreck army has been searching for you…” Something about his expression was all wrong. And then falling down on one knee, he added, “Your Majesty.

Does your knee still hurt, Sassenach?” he asked, seeing me rub it. It hadn’t ever quite recovered from being strained during our adventures on the Pitt, and climbing stairs provoked it. “Oh, just part of the general decline,” I said, trying to make a joke of it. I flexed my right arm, gingerly, feeling a twinge in the elbow. “Things don’t bend quite so easily as they used to. And other things hurt. Sometimes I think I’m falling apart.” Jamie closed one eye and regarded me. “I’ve felt like that since I was about twenty,” he observed. “Ye get used to it.” He stretched, making his spine give off a series of muffled pops, and held out a hand. “Come to bed, a nighean. Nothing hurts when ye love me.” He was right; nothing did.

Giving your heart to someone is like learning to ride a bike. You’ll skin your elbows and knees, but the pain will pass. You’ll heal. And one day, the scars will be a memory, not of falling, but of getting up again.

So good to see you again, little luv. How I've missed you." Gasping, I fall to my knees. The Caterpillar and the moth and the winged guy. They are all one and the same. They have been all along... "I've seen that bug," Jeb says. "In your car. On the mirror." He drops the backpack and grips my shoulders, trying to drag me to my feet. My legs won't cooperate. "Tut-tut. You are never to bow to me, lovely Alyssa." The voice drifts from the moth's proboscis on gray puffs of smoke. His attention shifts to Jeb. "You, on the other hand, will bow to her.

Frances learns something in this moment that will allow her to survive and function for the rest of her life. She finds out that one thing can look like another. That the facts of a situation don't necessarily indicate anything about the truth of a situation. In this moment, fact and truth become separated and commence to wander like twins in a fairy-tale, waiting to be reunited by that special someone who possesses the secret of telling them apart.

Kallias is going to explode on me at any moment. He’ll have me thrown into prison until he decides on the proper day and manner for killing me. He’ll— Kallias laughs so loudly and abruptly, I nearly topple out of the armchair. He has his hands on his knees while his whole body shakes from the force of the laughter. What the devils? Did I break the king? He manages to straighten after a moment and look over at me, but then his face contorts and he’s back to uncontrollable laughter. I feel my limbs grow tight, my face grow hot, anger pooling into every muscle. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I snap, shouting over the top of his laughter. He wasn’t even this bad when he read Orrin’s love letter. He says something I can’t quite make out, then rubs tears from his eyes and tries again. “You killed him!” He throws his head back and laughs and laughs. And somehow, I know that I’m not in trouble. How can I be if he’s this jovial over the fact? I could deny it. Plead on my behalf. But Kallias isn’t stupid. Though the constable doesn’t have enough evidence to convict me, Kallias knows the truth of it. “I’ve an inclination to kill again,” I say, glaring at him. Kallias props himself up on the nearest wall of books, catching his breath. Once he’s calm, he strides over to me and places his gloved hands on either side of my head. “My little hellion. Quite the force to be reckoned with, aren’t you? Oh, say you’ll marry me, Alessandra!” I swallow, thoroughly confused. “You’re not going to hang me?” “Hang you?” he repeats, letting his hands fall to his sides. “The man did you wrong, Alessandra. Honestly, you’ve saved me the trouble of tracking him down and killing him myself.

All memories soften with age, and the good ones are also the most perishable (...) conjured up till they faded to nothing. Like cave paintings by candlelight, she could only glimpse them now in the dark from the corner of her eye.

Your heart, Poppy? It is a gift I do not deserve.' He placed his hands on my knees as he lifted his gaze to mine. 'But it is one I will protect until my dying breath. I don't know what that means.' He stopped, curling his fingers into the leggings, into my skin. 'Okay. Fuck. I do know what that means. It's why I'm in awe of everything you say or do- everything you are. It's why you're the first thing I think about when I wake and the last thought I have when I fall asleep, replacing everything else. It's why when I'm with you, I can be quiet. I can just be. You know what that means.

For once, Frances is stripped of irony. She is in the presence of something bigger--namely Herself. Or at least the self implied by her new body. This is how the Blessed Virgin visits us. She inhabits our own flesh and makes love out of it. Nothing is ironic in the moment of first love. And Frances is in love. With her body, and what it is bringing forth.

The path of destiny pulls you forward. It exhumes you from a state of being and propels you towards the juncture you were created for. A new frontier that you are forced to tread with a cross on your back, heavy as a boulder. When you fall to your knees at the hands of your betrayer, you can only hope to find the one sent to carry you burden- shoulder the journey towards your final punishment. Sometimes duplicity and treason are markers of the enemy and sometimes, the failed intention of a masterful ally. But, nevertheless, as they burden you with a vexing brand of love, they become nothing more than the kiss of Judas, pressing a crown of thorns into your flesh. Seemingly without reason— vastly disappointing. Although I am submerged in violent water, I will rise above. My enemies, my friends, are incapable of derailing me from destiny’s design. So, I press forward-move-rely on the hope of the future- create the possible out of the impossible as I weave into life’s grand tapestry. I believe in the things that wait for me- my enemies, my friends- most of all love. It is the finish line I hunger for, the promise of love in all of its glory. I can endure all things in the hold name of love. And I will.

I just want to say one thing. If I ever write a novel again, it's going to be in defense of weak women, inept and codependent women. I'm going to talk about all the great movies and songs and poetry that focus on such women. I'm going to toast Blanche DuBois. I'm going to celebrate women who aren't afraid to show their need and their vulnerabilities. To be honest about how hard it can be to plow your way through a life that offers no guarantees about anything. I'm going to get on my metaphorical knees and thank women who fall apart, who cry and carry on and wail and wring their hands because you know what, Midge? We all need to cry. Thank God for women who can articulate their vulnerabilities and express what probably a lot of other people want to say and feel they can't. Those peoples' stronghold against falling apart themselves is the disdain they feel for women who do it for them. Strong. I'm starting to think that's as much a party line as anything else ever handed to women for their assigned roles. When do we get respect for our differences from men? Our strength is our weakness. Our ability to feel is our humanity. You know what? I'll bet if you talk to a hundred strong women, 99 of them would say 'I'm sick of being strong. I would like to be cared for. I would like someone else to make the goddamn decisions, I'm sick of making decisions.' I know this one woman who's a beacon of strength. A single mother who can do everything - even more than you, Midge. I ran into her not long ago and we went and got a coffee and you know what she told me? She told me that when she goes out to dinner with her guy, she asks him to order everything for her. Every single thing, drink to dessert. Because she just wants to unhitch. All of us dependent, weak women have the courage to do all the time what she can only do in a restaurant.

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear. Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you. The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

My heart has been broken a million times by the same hand, yet I would let it happen a million times again if it meant it was by you. I was weaker than I thought / my heart sagging like the stems of uncut, unkempt flowers because of the sunlight you held in your faraway heart / Maybe you weren't mine to love / I think I'm falling The wallpaper above her bed frame was glued in my brain the way it was glued against her walls / I got so close to running my fingers against it / I wish I felt the confidence to tell you the truth, as strongly as I felt stubborn to hide it Do you hear that? That's my heart knocking against my chest at the sight of you / I've never heard anything more terrifying / how could you provide me air and suffocate me at the same time? Blue hydrangeas, pink tulips, red bleeding hearts / it's all you ever loved, but never yourself / I never understood why anyone spoke poorly of the color brown, it was a dream on you And that kiss... I think about it all the time / was it wrong of me to think of you when you were never mine? / I feel lucky to have had you, but dismayed to know what life is like without you Don't worry if the flowers pass, I'll be right there to plant you more / and when the soil grows old, I'll comfort it in the chaos of the storm Am I a ghost in your story? / because you look at me with conviction when I don't even know the crime I committed Burden me with your secrets / so I can carry the weight you're so fearful of letting go To be close to you was to be haunted by what I couldn't have and to be reminded of how much I truly wanted you / and I'd be lying if I said I never thought about where my hands would take me across your body Midnights and daydreaming hours of retracing steps to how we possibly got here / how did I ever let time pass this long without seeing you? / my heart was so full of our memories that painted my body like a scrapbook I tried to stop loving you, but along the way, you found your way into the sound of my laugh, the style of my writing, and the threads of my clothes / I would've gone down on my knees just to hear you say yes Neck stiff, legs weak, eyes set on what we could've looked like if you hadn't left / 'moving on' was a broken record that I never had the strength to lift the needle off of / If hearts were meant to love then why did mine feel so empty? / and suddenly, I fell Glances, gazes, eyes following places they shouldn't have seen / intimacy was to be seen by you; free falling was to be touched by you / there was no such thing as a crowded room where you stood She lives in between the pinks and yellows of the world / where a beautiful color is unknown to others / and when she speaks, I become a bee enthralled in a field of daisies

Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which you will get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise even although I am not wise when they want to reproach you. If you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature. For I am far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death. I am speaking now only to those of you who have condemned me to death. And I have another thing to say to them: You think that I was convicted through deficiency of words - I mean, that if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone, nothing unsaid, I might have gained an acquittal. Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words - certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to address you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I say, are unworthy of me. But I thought that I ought not to do anything common or mean in the hour of danger: nor do I now repent of the manner of my defence, and I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them. And now I depart hence condemned by you to suffer the penalty of death, and they, too, go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by my award - let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated, - and I think that they are well.

The best position for spanking girls is over the knees in such a way that your fingertips and toes just touch the ground and your bottom is at an angle that makes it easy for the spanker to maintain a metronome beat. There is something overwhelmingly feminine being exposed in this way, breasts full and pendulous, eyes pressed shut, your mind clear and your body free to plunge into absolute sensation.

I am falling in love with you.”My knees felt weak. I hadn’t expected that response from him.“With you, Taryn!” he stressed, looking directly into my eyes. “I don’t want anyone else - just you. And no matter where I am, wherever I go, you’re the only one who is holding my heart.

Faisal, say it. Please, say it.” Adam scooted close and pressed their faces together. Memories flickered through his mind like photographs falling to the floor. The night they met, the music playing beneath the tent on the beach, and the sweet honey taste of luqaymat. Peaches on Faisal’s lips, the warmth of his skin, Subhanallah, Faisal was always so warm, like he carried the sun within his soul. Feeling sand beneath his knees and sliding through his fingers. “Please. I want this. I want to be by your side for all eternity. Please, Faisal. Maa shaa Allah.

Abundance is not the money you have in your bank account, the trophies on your shelf, the letters after your name, the list of goals reached, the number of people you know, your perfect, healthy body, your adoring fans. Abundance is your connection to each breath, how sensitive you are to every flicker of sensation and emotion in the body. It is the delight with which you savor each unique moment, the joy with which you greet each new day. It is knowing yourself as presence, the power that creates and moves worlds. It is your open heart, how deeply moved you are by love every day, your willingness to embrace, to hold what needs to be held. It is the freshness of each morning unencumbered by memory or false hope. Abundance is the feeling of the afternoon breeze on your cheeks, the sun warming your face. It is meeting others in the field of honesty and vulnerability, connecting beyond the story, sharing what is alive. It is your rootedness in the present moment, knowing that you are always Home, no matter what happens, no matter what is gained or lost. It is touching life at the point of creation, never looking back, feeling the belly rise and fall, thanking each breath, giving praise to each breath. It is falling to your knees in awe, laughing at the stories they tell about you, sinking more deeply into rest. Abundance is simplicity. It is kindness. It is you, before every sunrise: fresh, open, and awake. You are rich, friend! You are rich!

Leaving Things Alone (excerpt) You train your eye and your vision lusts after colour. You train your ear, and you long for delightful sound. You delight in doing good, and your natural kindness is blown out of shape. You delight in righteousness, and you become righteous beyond all reason. You overdo liturgy, and you turn into a ham actor. Overdo your love of music, and you play corn. Love of wisdom leads to wise contriving. Love of knowledge leads to faultfinding. If men would stay as they really are, taking or leaving these eight delights would make no difference. But if they will not rest in their right state, the eight delights develop like malignant tumors. The world falls into confusion. Since man honour these delights, and lust after them, the world has gone stone-blind. When the delight is over, they still will not let go of it: they surround its memory with ritual worship, they fall on their knees to talk about it, play music and sing, fast and discipline themselves in honour of the eight delights. When the delights become a religion, how can you control them?

Tears are forming in your eyes A storm is warning in the sky The end of the world it seems You bend down and you fall on your knees Well get back on your feet yeah Don't look away Don't run away Hey baby it's only life Don't lose your faith Don't run away Hey baby its only life Yea it's only life You were always playing hard Never could let down your guard But you can't win If you never give in To that voice within Saying pick up your chin Baby let go of it [Chorus] Take your hesitance And your self-defense Leave them behind, it's only life Don't be so afraid Of facing everyday Just take your time, it's only life I'll be your stepping-stone No, don't be so alone Just hold on tight, it's only life [Chorus]

That night ended in a romantic kiss at her door, she asked me in, and we went up to her bedroom. She changed into her nightgown in her bathroom and she left the door open, as she changed, she left her prom gown on the floor, she said- ‘I am not going to wear it anymore or again, the way it looks now, it’s not worth anything.’ Then she asked me- ‘Do you still like what you see when you look at me?’ –Insecurely, as she was pulling her lace-like night top down over her breasts, then to let it slip from her hands, and then fall around her knees. This all happens, as she stands in the doorway of the bathroom. And I said- ‘Yes, you're beautiful, now and always, I love you Nevaeh and the baby!’ She said- ‘Awe, you’re such a sweetie! I love you too!

Lily has never gotton used to being alone. They turn in the water and turn again, then Ambrose lifts her above the surface once more and the creek rains down from her. He lays her gently on her back and her heart breaks. Her tears begin to flow because he is leaving - don't go! He sinks into the water on his back - take me with you! His body turns white again and shimmers into segments until all the pieces disappear. Lily lies face down at right angles to the creek, her head hanging over the edge, arms outstretched towards the spot where she last saw her brother.

It’s an extraordinary thing, the moment of surrender. To get down on your knees and ask the silence to save you, to reveal itself to you. To kneel down, to implore, to throw yourself out into space, to quietly whisper or roar your insignificance. To fall prostrate and ask to be carried. To humble yourself with your family, your bandmates, and to discover if there’s a face or a name to that silence.

You fight. You fight for what you want. You do not wallow or surrender. The lesson is not in lying down and allowing yourself to be stabbed, child. It's in pushing yourself up and battling back." "You fell down. So? Will you stay there, weeping over skinned knees? Or will you brush off your skirts, adjust your hair, and carry on? Do not relinquish your grasp on hope. It's one of the best weapons anyone possesses.

In your madness you said you loved me," she murmured shyly. His humor fled, and the smile left her lips as she continued, "You said it before, too. When the storm struck, I asked you to love me, and you said you did." Her voice was the barest of whispers. Ruark's gaze turned away from her, and he rubbed the bandage on his leg before he spoke. "Strange that madness should speak the truth, but truth it is." He met her questioning eyes directly. "Aye, I love you." The pain of longing marked his face with a momentary sadness. "And that is madness, in all truth." Shanna raised herself form his side and sat on her heels, staring down at him. "Why do you love me?" Her tone was wondrous. "I beset you at every turn. I deny you as a fit mate. I have betrayed you into slavery and worse. There is no sanity in your plea at all. How can you love me?" "Shanna! Shanna! Shanna!" he sighed, placing his fingers on her hand and gently tracing the lines of her finely boned fingers. "What man would boast the wisdom of his love? How many time has this world heard, 'I don't care, I love.' Do I count your faults and sins to tote them in a book?" ... "I dream of unbelievable softness. I remember warmth at my side the likes of which can set my heart afire. I see in the dark before me softly glowing eyes of aqua, once tender in a moment of love, then flashing with defiance and anger, now dark and blue with some stirring I know I have caused, now green and gay with laughter spilling from them. There is a form within my arms that I tenderly held and touched. There is that one who has met my passion with her own and left me gasping." Ruark caressed Shanna's arm and turned her face to him, making her look into his eyes and willing her to see the truth in them as he spoke. "My beloved Shanna. I cannot think of betrayal when I think of love. I can count no denials when I hold you close. I only wait for that day when you will say, 'I love." Shanna raised her hands as if to plead her case then let them fall dejectedly on her knees. Tears coursed down her cheeks, and she begged helplessly, "But I do not want to love you." She began to sob. "You are a colonial. You are untitled, a murderer condemned, a rogue, a slave. I want a name for my children. I want so much more of my husband." She rolled her eyes in sudden confusion. "And I do not want to hurt you more." Ruark sighed and gave up for the moment. He reached out and gently wiped away the tears as they fell. "Shanna, love," he whispered tenderly, "I cannot bear to see you cry. I will not press the matter for a while. I only beg you remember the longest journey is taken a step at a time. My love can wait, but it will neither yield nor change.

You're all fucking dead.' His voice is eerily calm and all the scarier for it. Every head in the room turns. 'Riorson!' Orsen's dagger clatters to the floor. 'You think surrendering will save you?' Xaden's lethally soft tone sends goose bumps up my arms. 'It is against our code to attack another rider in their sleep.' 'But you know he never should have bonded her!' Orsen puts his hands up, his palms facing us. 'You of all people have reason enough to want the weakling dead. We're just correcting a mistake.' 'Dragons don't make mistakes.' Xaden's shadows grab every assailant but Orsen by the throat, then constrict. They struggle, but it doesn't matter. Their faces turn people, the shadows holding tight as they sag to their knees, falling in an arc in front of me like lifeless puppets. I can't find it in my head to pity them. Xaden prowls forward as though he has all the time in the world and holds out his palm as yet another tendril of darkness lifts my discarded dagger from the floor. 'Let me explain.' Orsen eyes the dagger, and his hands tremble. 'I've heard everything I need to hear.' Xaden's fingers curl around the hilt. 'She should have killed you in the field, but she's merciful. That's not a flaw I possess.' He slashes forward so quickly that I barely catch the move, and Oren's throat opens in a horizontal line, blood streaming down his neck and chest in a torrent. He grabs for his throat, but it's useless. He bleeds out in seconds, crumpling to the floor. A crimson puddle grows around him. 'Damn, Xaden,' Garrick walks in, sheathing his sword as his gazes rakes over the room. 'No time for questioning?' His glance sweeps to me as if cataloguing injuries, catching on my throat. 'No need for it,' Xaden counters...

When we were fighting the other night, everything just suddenly clicked. When you asked me if you make me happy. That's all that matters right? I've never been happier. You're it for me, Keira." He put his other hand on my cheek. "And I thought that I'd be scared of making the next step with you too. But I'm not. The only thing I'm scared of is losing you. And when we make this official, that's it. You're the one. And I want to make that step. I'm in love with you. I'm so in love with you, Keira." Oh my God. I put my hand over my mouth. "I don't want another roommate ever again. I want to fall asleep every night with you by my side. And I only want to wake up next to you." "Rory..." "And I know I'd be happiest with you by my side for the rest of my life. Keira, I want you to be my roommate forever." He got down on one knee and pulled a box out of his pocket. I wiped away the tears that had started to fall from my eyes.

Marius made a movement. 'Oh, don't go!' she said. 'It won't be long.' She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs. At moments she struggled for breath. Raising her face as near as she could to Marius', she said, with a strange expression: 'Look, I can't cheat you. I have a letter for you in my pocket. I've had it since yesterday. I was asked to post it, but I didn't. I didn't want you to get it. But you might be angry with me when we meet again. Because we shall all meet again, shan't we? Take your letter.' With a convulsive movement she seized Marius' hand with her own injured one, but without seeming to feel the pain, and guided it to her pocket. 'Take it,' she said. Marius took out the letter, and she made a little gesture of satisfaction and acceptance. 'Now you must promise me something for my trouble...' She paused. 'What?' asked Marius. 'Do you promise?' 'Yes, I promise.' 'You must kiss me on the forehead after I'm dead...I shall know.' She let her head fall back on his knees; her lids fluttered, and then she was motionless. He thought that the sad soul had left her. But then, when he thought it was all over, she slowly opened her eyes that were now deep with the shadow of death, and said in a voice so sweet that it seemed already to come from another world: 'You know, Monsieur Marius, I think I was a little bit in love with you.' She tried to smile, and died.

Dark and sweet, the elixir of love is in her mouth. The more I drink, the more I remember all the things we've never done. I was a ghost until I touched you. Never swallowed mortal food until I tasted you, never understood the spoken word until I found your tongue. I've been a sleepwalker, sad somnambula, hands outstretched to strike the solid thing that could awaken me to life at last. I have only ever stood here under this lamp, against your body, I've missed you all my life.

There is no pain - just travel. On her knees, she stays still as a supplicant ready for communion. It is very quiet. All of a sudden there is no hurry. There will be time for everything. For the breezes that blow and for the rainwater drying in the gutters, for Maury to find a place of safety in the world, for Malcolm to come back from the dead and ask her about birds and jets. For the big things too, things like beauty and vengeance and honor and righteousness and the grace of God and the slow spilling of the earth from day to night and back to day again. It is spread out before her, compressed into one single moment. She will be able to see it all -- if she can keep her sleepy eyes open. It's like a dream where she is. Like a dream where you find yourself underwater and you are panicked for a moment until you realize you no longer need to breathe, and you can stay under the surface forever. She feels her body falling sideways to the ground. It happens slow - and she expects a crash that never comes because her mind is jumping and it doesn't know which way is up anymore, like the moon above her and the fish below her and her in between floating, like on the surface of the river, floating between sea and sky, the world all skin, all meniscus, and she a part of it too. Moses Todd told her if you lean over the rail at Niagara Falls it takes your breath away, like turning yourself inside out -- and Lee the hunter told her that one time people used to stuff themselves in barrels and ride over the edge. And she is there too, floating out over the edge of the falls, the roar of the water so deafening it's like hearing nothing at all, like pillows in your ears, and the water exactly the temperature of your skin, like you are falling and the water is falling, and the water is just more of you, like everything is just more of you, just different configurations of the things that make you up. She is there, and she's sailing out and down over the falls, down and down, and it takes a long time because the falls are one of God's great mysteries and so high they are higher than any building, and so she is held there, spinning in the air, her eyes closed because she's spinning on the inside too, down and down. She wonders if she will ever hit the bottom, wonders will the splash ever come. Maybe not - because God is a slick god, and he knows things about infinities. Infinities are warm places that never end. And they aren't about good and evil, they're just peaceful-like and calm, and they're where all travelers go eventually, and they are round everywhere you look because you can't have any edges in infinities. And also they make forever seem like an okay thing.

Have you seen your sin in light of the Law of God? Do you understand in your heart of hearts that if every secret sin is manifest on the Day of Wrath and if justice had its way, you would fall like lightning into hell? Have you fallen prostrate in the blood-soaked earth at the foot of the cross? Have you pictured Jesus Christ crucified? Have you seen the precious blood pouring from His hands and His feet, and cried, “For me He dies”? If you have, horror mingled with unspeakable gratitude will drive you to your knees, and you will whisper, “Oh, God, because You did that for me, I will do anything for You!” This zeal for God will produce in you a zeal for the lost. Remember that whispered prayer of surrender the next time you fear hollers at you as you hand someone a tract.

At first Alexander could not believe it was his Tania. He blinked and tried to refocus his eyes. She was walking around the table, gesturing, showing, leaning forward, bending over. At one point she straightened out and wiped her forehead. She was wearing a short-sleeved yellow peasant dress. She was barefoot, and her slender legs were exposed above her knee. Her bare arms were lightly tanned. Her blonde hair looked bleached by the sun and was parted into two shoulder-length braids tucked behind her ears. Even from a distance he could see the summer freckles on her nose. She was achingly beautiful. And alive. Alexander closed his eyes, then opened them again. She was still there, bending over the boy’s work. She said something, everyone laughed loudly, and Alexander watched as the boy’s arm touched Tatiana’s back. Tatiana smiled. Her white teeth sparkled like the rest of her. Alexander didn’t know what to do. She was alive, that was obvious. Then why hadn’t she written him? And where was Dasha? Alexander couldn’t very well continue to stand under a lilac tree. He went back out onto the main road, took a deep breath, stubbed out his cigarette, and walked toward the square, never taking his eyes off her braids. His heart was thundering in his chest, as if he were going into battle. Tatiana looked up, saw him, and covered her face with her hands. Alexander watched everyone get up and rush to her, the old ladies showing unexpected agility and speed. She pushed them all away, pushed the table away, pushed the bench away, and ran to him. Alexander was paralyzed by his emotion. He wanted to smile, but he thought any second he was going to fall to his knees and cry. He dropped all his gear, including his rifle. God, he thought, in a second I’m going to feel her. And that’s when he smiled. Tatiana sprang into his open arms, and Alexander, lifting her off her feet with the force of his embrace, couldn’t hug her tight enough, couldn’t breathe in enough of her. She flung her arms around his neck, burying her face in his bearded cheek. Dry sobs racked her entire body. She was heavier than the last time he felt her in all her clothes as he lifted her into the Lake Ladoga truck. She, with her boots, her clothes, coats, and coverings, had not weighed what she weighed now. She smelled incredible. She smelled of soap and sunshine and caramelized sugar. She felt incredible. Holding her to him, Alexander rubbed his face into her braids, murmuring a few pointless words. “Shh, shh…come on, now, shh, Tatia. Please…” His voice broke. “Oh, Alexander,” Tatiana said softly into his neck. She was clutching the back of his head. “You’re alive. Thank God.” “Oh, Tatiana,” Alexander said, hugging her tighter, if that were possible, his arms swaddling her summer body. “You’re alive. Thank God.” His hands ran up to her neck and down to the small of her back. Her dress was made of very thin cotton. He could almost feel her skin through it. She felt very soft. Finally he let her feet touch the ground. Tatiana looked up at him. His hands remained around her little waist. He wasn’t letting go of her. Was she always this tiny, standing barefoot in front of him? “I like your beard,” Tatiana said, smiling shyly and touching his face. “I love your hair,” Alexander said, pulling on a braid and smiling back. “You’re messy…” He looked her over. “And you’re stunning.” He could not take his eyes off her glorious, eager, vivid lips. They were the color of July tomatoes— He bent to her—

I love the buildings. They're called skyscrapers. They're the closest thing to an ocean here. But it's an ocean that goes straight up, not flat out. They say that the body of water stretching away to the east of Manhattan is the ocean but it isn't. Not my ocean, anyway. It's weird because back home I just took it for granted, my grey-green sea. Now I have a granite ocean. It gives me the same happy-sad feeling I need sometimes. When I look straight up at the buildings I can feel alone in a good way. Not in that horrible way of no one knows me.

Clowns.” Clowns? “Really?” I tried to imagine a tiny Aiden crying over men and women with overly painted faces and red noses, but I couldn’t. The big guy was still facing me. His expression clear and even, as he dipped his chin. “Eh.” God help me, he’d gone Canadian on me. I had to will my face not to react at the fact he’d gone with the one word he usually used only when he was super relaxed around other people. “I thought they were going to eat me.” Now imagining that had me cracking a little smile. I slid my palm under my cheek. “How old were you? Nineteen?” Those big chocolate-colored eyes blinked, slow, slow, slow. His dark pink lips parted just slightly. “Are you making fun of me?” he drawled. “Yes.” The fractures of my grin cracked into bigger pieces. “Because I was scared of clowns?” It was like he couldn’t understand why that was amusing. But it was. “I just can’t imagine you scared of anything, much less clowns. Come on. Even I’ve never been scared of clowns.” “I was four.” I couldn’t help but snicker. “Four… fourteen, same difference.” Based on the mule-ish expression on his face, he wasn’t amused. “This is the last time that I come over to save you from the boogeyman.” Shocked out of my mind for a split second, I tried to pretend like I wasn’t, but… I was. He was joking with me. Aiden was in bed joking around. With me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I was just messing with you.” I scooted one more millimeter closer to him, drawing my knees up so that they hit his thighs. “Please don’t leave yet.” “I won’t,” he said, settling on his pillow with his hands under his cheek, his eyes already drifting to a close. I didn’t need to ask him to promise not to leave me; I knew he wouldn’t if he said so. That was just the kind of man he was. “Aiden?” I whispered. “Hmm?” he murmured. “Thank you for coming in here with me.” “Uh-huh.” That big body adjusted itself just slightly before he let out a long, deep exhale. Without turning around, I laid the flashlight down behind me and aimed the beam toward the wall. He didn’t ask if I was really going to leave the flashlight on all night—or at least however long the battery lasted—instead, I just smiled at him as I took my glasses off and set them on the unused nightstand behind me. Then I tucked my hands under my cheek and watched him. “Good night. Thank you again for staying with me.” Peeking one eye open, just a narrow slit, he hummed. “Shh.” That ‘shh’ was about as close to a ‘you’re welcome’ as I was going to get. I closed my eyes with a little grin on my face. Maybe five seconds later, Aiden’s spoke up. “Vanessa?” “Hmm?” “Why was I saved on your work phone as Miranda P.?” That had my eyes snapping open. I hadn’t deleted that entry off the contacts when I quit, had I? “It’s a long, boring story, and you should go to sleep. Okay?” The “uh-huh” out of him sounded as disbelieving as it should have. He knew I was full of shit, but somehow, knowing he knew, wasn’t enough to keep me from falling asleep soon after

Golden girl, there you are. I’m singing for the crowd, the music’s loud. I’m living my dream, riding the high, But I see you there, sunlight in your hair, And I’m ready to go, desperate to fly. Golden girl, there you are. Dancing for the crowd, the music’s loud. I want you so bad. I can’t look away. Later, you’ll drop to your knees. You’ll beg me please. And then you’ll go, it’s only your body I know. Golden girl, where’d you go? You’re not there, with sunlight in your hair. I could have you in the bar or the back of my car, But never your heart. I’m falling apart. I’ll drop to my knees, I’ll beg you. Please. Please don’t go. There’s so much more I want to know. Eva, please. I’m on my knees. Golden girl, where’d you go? I’m singing for the crowd, the music’s loud. And you’re not there, with sunlight in your hair. Eva, please. I’m on my knees.

Reading is like skiing. When done well, when done by an expert, both reading and skiing are graceful, harmonious, activities. When done by a beginner, both are awkward, frustrating, and slow. Learning to ski is one of the most humiliating experiences an adult can undergo (that is one reason to start young). After all, an adult has been walking for a long time; he knows where his feet are; he knows how to put one foot in front of the other in order to get somewhere. But as soon as he puts skis on his feet, it is as though he had to learn to walk all over again. He slips and slides, falls down, has trouble getting up, gets his skis crossed, tumbles again, and generally looks- and feels- like a fool. Even the best instructor seems at first to be of no help. The ease with which the instructor performs actions that he says are simple but that the student secretly believes are impossible is almost insulting. How can you remember everything the instructors says you have to remember? Bend your knees. Look down the hill Keep your weight on the downhill ski. Keep your back straight, but nevertheless lean forward. The admonitions seem endless-how can you think about all that and still ski? The point about skiing, of course, is that you should not be thinking about the separate acts that, together, make a smooth turn or series of linked turns- instead, you should merely be looking ahead of you down the hill, anticipating bumps and other skiers, enjoying the feel of the cold wind on your cheeks, smiling with pleasure at the fluid grace of your body as you speed down the mountain. In other words, you must learn to forget the separate acts in order to perform all of them, and indeed any of them, well. But in order to forget them as separate acts, you have to learn them first as separate acts. only then can you put them together to become a good skier.

I love when he’s in these moods, this affectionate. Though it can be said of Gray that he’s this way all the time with me. He never has an off day. I’ve known every single day of our life together so far just what he’s thinking and feeling because he tells me, he shows me in so many different, lovely, sometimes depraved ways. Usually with my clothes off. Most often with his head between my legs. And that’s where I think this hot kiss is going—forget dinner, forget needing to shower off the busy workday. I’m wholly in this when I grip the back of his head and fall deeper into his mouth, moaning my protest when we part too soon. His forehead rests to mine. I spur him on. “Your sugar wife needs attention. You’ve neglected my needs all day, Grayson.” A growl comes out of his mouth and it delights me. Turns me on. Makes me wetter than a summer rain. “You know how hard that smart mouth of yours makes me. I’m about to put you on your knees.

Make for yourself a world you can believe in. It sounds simple, I know. But it’s not. Listen, there are a million worlds you could make for yourself. Everyone you know has a completely different one—the woman in 5G, that cab driver over there, you. Sure, there are overlaps, but only in the details. Some people make their worlds around what they think reality is like. They convince themselves that they had nothing to do with their worlds’ creations or continuations. Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are. But you want to make for yourself a world that is deliberately and meticulously personalized. A theater for your life, if I could put it like that. Don’t live an accident. Don’t call a knife a knife. Live a life that has never been lived before, in which everything you experience is yours and only yours. Make accidents on purpose. Call a knife a name by which only you will recognize it. Now I’m not a very smart man, but I’m not a dumb one, either. So listen: If you can manage what I’ve told you, as I was never able to, you will give your life meaning.

Get down on your knees,' Cardan says, looking insufferably pleased with himself. His fury has transmuted in to gloating. 'Beg. Make it pretty. Flowery. Worthy of me.' ... 'Beg? I echo. For a moment, he looks surprised, but that's quickly replaced by even greater malice. 'You defied me. More than once. Your only hope is to throw yourself on my mercy in front of everyone. Do it, or I will keep hurting you until there is nothing left to hurt.' ... There is no shame in surrender. As Taryn said, they're just words. I don't have to mean them. I can lie. I start to lower myself to the ground. This will be over quickly, every word will taste like bile, and then it will be over. When I open my mouth, though, nothing comes out. I can't do it. Instead I shake my head at the thrill running through me at the sheer lunacy of what I'm about to do. It's the thrill of leaping without being able to see the ground below you, right before you realise that's called falling. 'You think because you can humiliate me, you can control me?' I say, looking him in those black eyes. 'Well, I think you're an idiot. Since we started being tutored together, you've gone out of your way to make me feel like I'm less than you. And to coddle your ego, I have made myself less. I have made myself small, I have kept my head down. But it wasn't enough to make you leave Taryn and me alone, so I'm not going to do that anymore. 'I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this'- I throw his own words back at him- 'this is the least of what I can do.' Cardan looks at me as though he's never seen me before. He looks at me as though no one has ever spoken to him like this. Maybe no one has.

But what if I don't believe in God? It's like they've sat me in front of a mannequin and said, Fall in love with him. You can't will feeling. What Jack says issues from some still, true place that could not be extinguished by all the schizophrenia his genetic code could muster. It sounds something like this. Get on your knees and find some quiet space inside yourself, a little sunshine right about here. Jack holds his hands in a ball shape about midchest, saying, Let go. Surrender, Dorothy, the witch wrote in the sky. Surrender, Mary. I want to surrender but have no idea what that means. He goes on with a level gaze and a steady tone: Yield up what scares you. Yield up what makes you want to scream and cry. Enter into that quiet. It's a cathedral. It's an empty football stadium with all the lights on. And pray to be an instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is conflict, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair hope... What if I get no answer there? If God hasn't spoken, do nothing. Fulfill the contract you entered into at the box factory, amen. Make the containers you promised to tape and staple. Go quietly and shine. Wait. Those not impelled to act must remain in the cathedral. Don't be lonely. I get so lonely sometimes, I could put a box on my head and mail myself to a stranger ...

Everyday i get closer to our meeting i feel like i've been walking this path for a thousand years towards you.. and yet i'm still not there so close, and yet so far but i keep walking despite the tears despite the wind despite the skinned knees and broken bones despite the bruises and scars that made this heart what it is today i keep walking towards you there's only one direction one direction: towards you... from you, to you i have nothing else nothing that is my poverty i keep walking because behind every sun's setting is a rising behind every storm is a refuge behind every fall is a rise behind every tear is a cleansing of the eyes and in every spot i've ever been stabbed, is a healing and the creation of skin stronger than it was i keep walking because WALLAHI i've nothing but your mercy i've nothing but your promise your words your promise that: يَا أَيُّهَا الْإِنسَانُ إِنَّكَ كَادِحٌ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ كَدْحًا فَمُلَاقِيهِ - 84:6 O mankind, indeed you are laboring toward your Lord with [great] exertion and will meet it. [Quran 84:6]

The Winding Stair My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, 'Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all thought is done: Who can distinguish darkness from the soul My Self. The consecretes blade upon my knees Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was, Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass Unspotted by the centuries; That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn From some court-lady's dress and round The wodden scabbard bound and wound Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war? Think of ancestral night that can, If but imagination scorn the earth And intellect is wandering To this and that and t'other thing, Deliver from the crime of death and birth. My Self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it Five hundred years ago, about it lie Flowers from I know not what embroidery - Heart's purple - and all these I set For emblems of the day against the tower Emblematical of the night, And claim as by a soldier's right A charter to commit the crime once more. My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows And falls into the basin of the mind That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, For intellect no longer knows Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known - That is to say, ascends to Heaven; Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone. II My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more? Endure that toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness; The finished man among his enemies? - How in the name of Heaven can he escape That defiling and disfigured shape The mirror of malicious eyes Casts upon his eyes until at last He thinks that shape must be his shape? And what's the good of an escape If honour find him in the wintry blast? I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul. I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest

In Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, Pabongka Rinpoche explains how the great Atisha would purify any negativity, no matter how small, immediately. Even in public or when riding his horse, as soon as he noticed a breach of his ethics, he would stop what he was doing, drop to one knee and then and there, purify it with the four opponent powers—the powers of dependence, regret, remedy and restraint. Of course, compared to us, Atisha may not have had that much to purify. Still, he would say, “I never break my pratimoksha vows; I rarely break my bodhisattva vows; but my tantric vows—I transgress those like falling rain.” Atisha practiced purification in this way because of his deep realization of the psycho-mechanics of negative karma, especially its four fundamentals: negative karma is certain to bring suffering; it multiplies exponentially; if eradicated, it cannot bring its suffering result; and once created, it never simply disappears. Through the study and practice of Dharma, we should try to attain Atisha’s level of understanding. In the meantime, we should try to practice as he did.

I spin in the trail to face Kat, who raises her own walking stick to meet mine. ‘A duel to the death?’ Kat says, giggling. I laugh, too, and we spar for a moment playfully until Kat gently presses the tip of her stick into my chest. ‘On your knees and beg for mercy.’ Oh, god. This feels silly and dangerous at the same time. I kneel. I look up at Kat, beautiful and fierce standing there with the setting sun in her hair and her face so stern. Only her eyes are full of mirth. I stare. ‘Close your eyes, prisoner.’ I giggle stupidly, my heart leaping at the point of her stick. ‘Close your eyes. And stop laughing.’ I try to obey, shaking a little. Katy moves her makeshift lance to my neck, pressing gently. ‘Close em.’ I close my eyes, serious at last. There is a long silence, and I feel genuinely vulnerable for a moment, as though Kat really does have a sword to my neck. Then I feel the stick come down gently and touch each of my shoulders. ‘I… dub… thee… mine,’ says Kat softly. ‘Sealed with a kiss.’ The stick falls to the forest floor behind her. She kneels down in front of me and touches my face with both hands. It’s all I can do to stay here, to be here, to hold still.

I called the Keep, introduced myself to the disembodied female voice on the phone, and asked for the Beast Lord. In less than fifteen seconds Curran came on the line. “I’m going into hiding with Jim.” The silence on the other side of the phone had a distinctly sinister undertone. Perhaps he thought that his kissing superpowers had derailed me. Fat chance. I would keep him from having to kill Derek. That was a burden he didn’t need. “I thought about this morning,” I said, doing my best to sound calm and reasonable. “I’ve instructed the super to change the locks. If I ever catch you in my apartment again, I will file a formal complaint. I’ve taken your food, under duress, but I did take it. You rescued me once or twice, and you’ve seen me near naked. I realize that you’re judging this situation by shapeshifter standards, and you expect me to fall on my back with my legs spread.” “Not necessarily.” His voice matched mine in calmness. “You can fall on your hands and knees if you prefer. Or against the wall. Or on the kitchen counter. I suppose I might let you be on top, if you make it worth my while.” I didn’t grind my teeth—he would’ve heard it. I had to be calm and reasonable. “My point is this: no.” “No?” “There will be no falling, no sex, no you and me.” “I wanted to kiss you when you were in your house. In Savannah.” Why the hell was my heart pounding? “And?” “You looked afraid. That wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for.” Be calm and reasonable. “You flatter yourself. You’re not that scary.” “After I kissed you this morning, you were afraid again. Right after you looked like you were about to melt.” Melt? “You’re scared there might be something there, between you and me.” Wow. I struggled to swallow that little tidbit. “Every time I think you’ve reached the limits of arrogance, you show me new heights. Truly, your egotism is like the Universe—ever expanding.” “You thought about dragging me into your bed this morning.” “I thought about stabbing you and running away screaming. You broke into my house without permission and slobbered all over me. You’re a damn lunatic! And don’t give me that line about smelling my desire; I know it’s bullshit.” “I didn’t need to smell you. I could tell by the dreamy look in your eyes and the way your tongue licked the inside of my mouth.” “Enjoy the memory,” I ground out. “That’s the last time it will ever happen.” “Go play your games with Jim. I’ll find you both when I need you.” Arrogant asshole. “I tell you what, if you find us before those three days run out, I’ll cook you a damn dinner and serve it to you naked.” “Is that a promise?” “Yes. Go fuck yourself.” I slammed the phone down. Well, then. That was perfectly reasonable. On the other side of the counter an older, heavyset man stared at me like I had sprouted horns. Glenda handed me the money I’d given her. “That was some conversation. It was worth ten bucks.

How are things going with your brothers?” “The judge set a date to hear me out after graduation. Mrs.Collins has been prepping me.” “That is awesome!” “Yeah.” “What’s wrong?” “Carrie and Joe hired a lawyer and I lost visitation.” Echo placed her delicate hand over mine.“Oh, Noah. I am so sorry." I’d spent countless hours on the couch in the basement, staring at the ceiling wondering what she was doing. Her laughter, her smile, the feel of her body next to mine, and the regret that I let her walk away too easily haunted me. Taking the risk, I entwined my fingers with hers. Odds were I’d never get the chance to be this close again. "No, Mrs. Collins convinced me the best thing to do is to keep my distance and follow the letter of the law." "Wow, Mrs. Collins is a freaking miracle worker. Dangerous Noah Hutchins on the straight and narrow. If you don’t watch out she’ll ruin your rep with the girls." I lowered my voice. "Not that it matters. I only care what one girl thinks about me." She relaxed her fingers into mine and stroked her thumb over my skin. Minutes into being alone together, we fell into each other again, like no time had passed. I could blame her for ending us, but in the end, I agreed with her decision. “How about you, Echo? Did you find your answers?” “No.” If I continued to disregard breakup rules, I might as well go all the way. I pushed her curls behind her shoulder and let my fingers linger longer than needed so I could enjoy the silky feel. “Don’t hide from me, baby. We’ve been through too much for that.” Echo leaned into me, placing her head on my shoulder and letting me wrap an arm around her. “I’ve missed you, too, Noah. I’m tired of ignoring you.” “Then don’t.” Ignoring her hurt like hell. Acknowledging her had to be better. I swallowed, trying to shut out the bittersweet memories of our last night together. “Where’ve you been? It kills me when you’re not at school.” “I went to an art gallery and the curator showed some interest in my work and sold my first piece two days later. Since then, I’ve been traveling around to different galleries, hawking my wares.” “That’s awesome, Echo. Sounds like you’re fitting into your future perfectly. Where did you decide to go to school?” “I don’t know if I’m going to school.” Shock jolted my system and I inched away to make sure I understood. “What the fuck do you mean you don’t know? You’ve got colleges falling all over you and you don’t fucking know if you want to go to school?” My damned little siren laughed at me. “I see your language has improved.” Poof—like magic, the anger disappeared. “If you’re not going to school, then what are your plans?” "I’m considering putting college off for a year or two and traveling cross-country, hopping from gallery to gallery.” “I feel like a dick. We made a deal and I left you hanging. I’m not that guy who goes back on his word. What can I do to help you get to the truth?” Echo’s chest rose with her breath then deflated when she exhaled. Sensing our moment ending, I nuzzled her hair, savoring her scent. She patted my knee and broke away. “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.” "I think it’s time that I move on. As soon as I graduate, this part of my life will be over. I’m okay with not knowing what happened.” Her words sounded pretty, but I knew her better. She’d blinked three times in a row.

Don't look at me like that." "Like what?" I arch an eyebrow. His gaze flashes to mine. "Like you're thinking about the sparring gym last night." "Well, now that you mention it." My tongue flicks over my lower lip, remembering how his hips pinned mine to the mat after everyone had left for the night. How close we both came to giving in to the pulsing need between us. His jaw flexes, and his grip tightens on his fork. "Seriously. I can't think when you look at me like that." "You're the one with the ridiculous rule about not falling for each other," I remind him. "You're still looking." He forces his attention back to his plate. "You make it hard to look away." I miss his mouth on my skin, the feel of his body pressed against mine. I miss the look on his face when he watched me come undone. But I miss the feeling of him curled around me in sleep more. "I'm over here keeping my hands and memories to myself because you asked me to, and you're fucking me with your eyes. That's not playing fair." "Told you to stop staring." There's laughter in his voice, but his face is as expressionless as ever. I tap my fork on my plate in pure frustration. You know what. Fuck this. Two can play at this game. "If you'd just man up and admit there's something between us, I would strip down to my skin so you could see every single inch of me. And once I had you begging, I'd drop down to my knees, undo those flight leathers you're wearing, and wrap my lips around—" Xaden chokes. Every head in the dining hall turns his way, and Garrick pounds on his back until Xaden waves him off, taking a drink of his water. I grin, which earns me about six looks of confusion from our table and one set of rolled eyes from Liam. "You're going to be the death of me

I am burning. I have to live, I have to sing, I want to transform myself into a thousand different characters and carry their life with me onto the stage where it's so bright and so dark at the same time, just knowing there are three thousand people out there longing to be swept away by the passion that's about to flood out from scarlet curtains, to this I consecrate my body and my soul, I can give no more than all of myself, I feel my heart is a throbbing engine and my voice is the valve, like a wailing train, it has to sing or blow up, there's too much fuel, too much fire, and what am I to do with this voice if I can't let it out, it's not just singing. I am here as a speck, but I don't feel scared or about to be blown away, I feel like all New York is a warm embrace just waiting to enfold me. I am in love. But not with a person. I am passionately in love with my life.

Feeling the Wind in Your Hair The peak of the cliff sits tantalizingly close. Your hands rest on your knees as you gasp, willing more oxygen into your lungs. You look back with pride down the way you've come. Just a little farther and you'll be there. Your energy now partially restored, you step on and on. The light wind lifts the closer you get to the peak. A plateau soon falls away abruptly down to the sea, and the sweeping air collects and whips into your face. The view is sublime but the payoff comes as you stand--arms stretched wide in triumph--with your eyes closed as the raging wind buffets your face. This wind, collected and grown above oceans, flitting and crashing its way across the waves, finally reaches the shore and clasps itself around you in a fleeting embrace. The crack of its passing meets your ears and slowly it absorbs you--a streaming current of air caressing your rejoicing face.

Let it hurt. Pick those flowers on your lungs and let it wither. Let your heart stop beating for someone who doesn’t deserves it. Let yourself be burn to your worst degree. Fall right down on your knees and scream the damn pain inside you. You’ve let the love to do its work, let it hurt. That’s part of its work. Let it bleed. Let the tears roll down your face. For once, allow yourself to be an artist. Let your mouth bleed with the unspoken feelings you’ve been wanting to say and be the author of your own story. Let the abstract in you be seen by the people who are doubting you. Do not cut your wrist, blood and scar might ruin your skin. I know, your heart was cut by the words they’ve stabbed on you, let it bleed with poetry and speak for yourself. Let it heal. For how many times people could’ve told you that time heals. Let me now tell you that it’s you, and you only, who could heal yourself. You could pick your broken pieces and build a better and stronger you. Let it heal, not for anyone. Let it heal for yourself. Even for once, let it be for yourself. And let it go. Snap out of the darkness you’re in right now. Let go of the pain that’s stopping you from moving forward. Let the toxic people go, you could’ve been better without them. Stop holding on to the anchor. Stop drowning yourself from sadness. You could always be happy. Just learn to let go of the things that keep you away from that possibility, just let go.

Baruk looked up, then twisted in his chair to regard his guest, who was busy preening herself on his map-table. ‘Crone, the inconsistencies in this text are infuriating.’ The Great Raven cocked her head, beak gaping for a moment in laughter, then said, ‘So what? Show me a written history that makes sense, and I will show you true fiction. If that is all you want, then look elsewhere! My master concluded that Dillat’s nonsense would make a fine gift for your collection. If you are truly displeased, there are plenty of other idiocies in his library, those that he bothered to extract from Moon’s Spawn, that is. He left whole rooms crammed with the rubbish, you know.’ Baruk blinked slowly, struggling to keep his horror from his voice as he said, ‘No, I did not know that.’ Undeceived, Crone cackled. Then she said, ‘My master was most amused at the notion of falling to his knees and crying out to the Hundred Gods-’ ‘Thousand. The Thousand Gods.’ ‘Whatever.

I just care about you so much … but I’ve always got this fear that … one day you’ll leave. Or Pip and Jason will leave, or … I don’t know.’ Fresh tears fell from my cheeks. ‘I’m never going to fall in love, so … my friendships are all I have, so … I just … can’t bear the idea of losing any of my friends. Because I’m never going to have that one special person.’ ‘Can you let me be that person?’ Rooney said quietly. I sniffed loudly. ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘I mean I want to be your special person.’ [...] ‘But you know what I realised on my walk?’ she said. ‘I realise that I love you, Georgia.’ My mouth dropped open. ‘Obviously I’m not romantically in love with you. But I realised that whatever these feelings are for you, I …’ She grinned wildly. ‘I feel like I am in love. Me and you – this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in a way I have never felt in my fucking life. And maybe most people would look at us and think that we’re just friends, or whatever, but I know that it’s just … so much MORE than that.’ She gestured dramatically at me with both hands. ‘You changed me. You … you fucking saved me, I swear to God. I know I still do a lot of dumb stuff and I say the wrong things and I still have days where I just feel like shit but … I’ve felt happier over the past few weeks than I have in years.’ I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.’ She grabbed the bunch of flowers and practically threw them at me. ‘And I bought these for you because I honestly didn’t know how else to express any of that to you.’ I was crying. I just started crying again. Rooney wiped the tears off my cheeks.

When I feel comfortable enough that he is not going to trip me, I manage to look down, and see that his feet are gliding gracefully on the floor in his bloack loafers. He's even doing this very hot rhythmitic figure eight with his hips. Maybe it's the music that's growing on me, or it's that I'm giddy from not having had anything to eat except half a miniquiche, but after a moment or so, I start to move my hips, too. And suddenly, I'm breathless again, but in a good way. Once Pip gets into the groove, he stops looking at the instructor and his eyes fasten on me. So close like this, they're shocking in their brilliance, so light blue as to be almost white. Like silver medallions moving back and forth on a chain, they're hypnotizing. Where did they come from? I swear they weren't so beautiful a day ago, when we were sitting in the food court, talking about ewl and popping stag mints. " Where did you learn to do this?" I whisper in his ear, still unable to break from his gaze. " Faries love to dance. This is similar to one of theirs," he explains as he slows to near a stop. His eyes focous on Fit Lady again, and before I can ask what he's doing, he expertly glides his leg out from underneath his body, dragging his foot on the ground. " Yours should follow him," Fit Lady says, watching my legs. ...then I feel her hand on my leg, pulling it up into the air. I toddle about on one leg like a top that's about to fall, so Pip steadies me, and I hold on so tight to his arms with my sweaty hands as to cut off his circualtion. But he doesn't seem to mind. I watch as she grips my leg at the knee and pulls it, higher, higher … almost to Pip's hip level, then force me to extend and curve it around him. Ow, I am not a pretzel. " What are you doing?" " Gancho," she says. " Just take your leg up and wrap it around his body." " Wait. Wh- wh-at?" He's still staring at me with those amazing eyes as I push him away, falling back onto my elbows with a deafening crack.

know,” she said, and he believed her. “You’re all capable of such great and terrible things. And in such a short amount of time. You are surrounded by millions of those like you, yet you can still feel alone. You’re so angry and powerful and wonderful. And so fragile. You can break into pieces and feel so lost. I didn’t get that. Not … before. I don’t think any of us did. You’re complex and yet so simple at the same time. It’s a dichotomy that shouldn’t be possible. When you smile, it’s like the sun is out. When you cry, it’s like you’re trapped in shadows and you can’t find your way back to the light. You can hold a gun to your enemy’s head and pull the trigger in the name of what you call God. You drop bombs and scorch the ground beneath your feet. You hurt each other. You love each other. You scream words that fall on deaf ears. You hate that others aren’t like you. They scare you, even though they want nothing more than to be you. You make yourselves a home out of nothing. You carry each other until your knees give out and you stumble. It’s almost impossible to understand. None of us could get that. Not until they felt a heart beating in a chest like I have. Not until I felt the bones beneath my skin. We’re not alike. Not really. We’re separated by time and space. And yet, somehow, we’re all made of dust and stars. I think we’d forgotten that. And I don’t know if you ever knew that to begin with. How can you be alone when we’re all the same?” Nate blinked away the burn in his eyes.

Жираф Сегодня, я вижу, особенно грустен твой взгляд, И руки особенно тонки, колени обняв. Послушай: далёко, далёко на озере Чад Изысканный бродит жираф. Ему грациозная стройность и нега дана, И шкуру его украшает волшебный узор, С которым равняться осмелиться только Луна, Дробясь и качаясь на влаге широких озёр. Вдали он подобен цветным парусам корабля, И бег его плавен, как радостный птичий полёт. Я знаю, что много чудесного видит земля, Когда на закате он прячется в мраморный грот. Я знаю весёлые сказки таинственных стран Про чёрную деву, про страсть молодого вождя, Но ты слишком долго вдыхала тяжёлый туман, Ты верить не хочешь во что-нибудь, кроме дождя. И как я тебе расскажу про тропический сад, Про стройный пальмы, про запах немыслимых трав... Ты плачешь? Послушай... далёко, на озере Чад Изысканный бродит жираф. The Giraffe O, the look in your eyes this morning is more than usually sad, With your little arms wrapped round your knees and body bent in half. Let me tell you a story: far, far away, on the distant shores of Lake Chad, There roams a most majestic giraffe Blessed with a handsome build and graceful carriage And a coat painted hypnotic, magical patterns, With which none but the moon above dare compare When her light falls down to be scattered and rocked on the waters, Passing like a blazing sail far out at sea As she runs by, nimble and carefree as a bird in flight. I hear tell the earth has seen many wonderful things When the giraffe hides herself away and the sun sets into night. I know fabulous tales of far off, alien lands, Of a dark maiden, of a young captain’s burning desire, all this I know, But you’ve breathed in the damp marsh air for so long You don’t want to believe in anything but the rain out your window. I still haven’t told you about her tropic garden, with the slenderest palm trees, The sweetest wildflowers, meadows of unbelievable grass . . . Are you crying? Let me tell you a story: far away, on the distant shores of Lake Chad, There roams a most majestic giraffe.

When Heaven has an earthquake you fall to your knees and feel through the rubble to find the pieces of God. When my eternal, temple-blessed marriage shattered and everything that had been meaningful lay in jumbled shards around me, I had to slowly and carefully pick up every single piece and examine it, turning it over and over, to see if it was worthy to keep and to use in building a new house of meaning. As I gathered the broken pieces of God, I used only my own authority, only my own relationship with the divine, and the good, small voice that speaks inside me, to appraise them. I threw away many, and I kept many, assembling the bright pieces into One Great Thought. I asked only, "Do I see God's fingerprints on this? Does this little piece feel godly? Does it speak of love?" That made it easy. I was forever finished with the insane attempt to love a God who hurts me. When I picked up the little pieces of God-ordained polygamy, I smiled because there was no question. I thanked the God of Love, and threw that piece away.

Then shouts from the direction of the doorway. I started to black out, kneeing him in the crotch to no effect and clawing in panic at his hands, the flesh sloughing off under my nails. Then suddenly he straightened, and looked toward the door. Schubert came charging through, his service revolver raised. Two more officers came right behind. He whirled away from them as if to hide his ruined face. But he didn't hide it from me! He looked at me with what passed for a fixed and hideous grin, although it might have been the death rictus of his facial muscles. His voice was like a tinny rasp, hollow and unreal. "When the world starts to chew itself up alive, and spits out its own guts... be it on your conscience, Mr. Kolchak!" He staggered away. Schubert was yelling for me to stop him. I made a grab for his coat but it came off in my hand. The acid. He bolted for what had been an outside window, now boarded up, and smashed through it. We could hear his wail all the way down. And a distant, echoing clatter of falling wood... and glass... and bones.

Slowly, his hands coasted down to my hips, tracing my panties before he tugged them down. He looked up at me, even as his hand eased between my thighs. Ice-green eyes burned bright. "I've never wanted anyone as much as I want you." The calloused tips of his fingers slid along my swollen, slick sex. "Now that I have you, I don't know where to start." My lids fluttered, hands clutching at his shoulders as he rubbed back and forth. "Right there works for me." His smile was sin and promise. "You like that, honey?" "Yes." He toyed with the entrance to my sex, pausing there to push just enough for me to feel it, to want it. "How about here?" "There is..." My breath caught. He pushed in, long strong fingers filling me. "Is what?" he murmured darkly, those talented fingers slowly fucking me, as though he had all the time in the world. The blunt end of his thumb found my puffy clit and circled it. I whimpered again, falling against him, my arms wrapping around his neck. "So fucking good." He made a noise, possessive and greedy, his mouth finding my nipple, his long fingers pushing up into me. "God, you're perfect. So perfect for me." The slight curl of his fingers hit a spot, and that was it. I came in waves, shaking with it, heat swamping me. His eyes held mine as he coaxed me along, drawing my pleasure out. With a groan that sounded almost pained, Lucian slid to the floor, his wide shoulders edging between my legs. He palmed my thighs in his big hands to hold me steady. And then, with an impatient grunt, he leaned in and kissed my throbbing clit. Kissed it like he kissed my mouth, greedy and deep, licking and sucking, nibbling with firm lips. I cried out again, my knees so weak he had to hold me up. He ate me like a dessert, lapping at my slit before thrusting his tongue inside me. I couldn't take it. It was too much. I came again, writhing against his mouth. "That's it," he said between frantic kisses. "That's it, Em. Work that sweet pussy on my mouth." Oh, hell. I crumpled, dislodging myself before falling onto his lap. I cupped the thick column of his nape and kissed him, drawing in his breath as he groaned and devoured me.

That much hope had brought Max to his knees. Apparently if he didn’t let himself weep like a little girl to relieve this emotional pressure building inside of him, he was in danger of hitting the ground in a dead faint. Jules crouched beside him, checking for his pulse. “Are you okay? You’re not, like, having a heart attack or a stroke, are you?” “Fuck you,” Max managed, swatting his hand away. “I’m not that old.” “If you really think heart disease is about age, then you definitely need to make an appointment with a cardiologist, like tomorrow—” “I just . . . tripped,” Max said, but when he tried to get up, he found he still hadn’t regained his equilibrium. Shit. “Or maybe you needed to get on your knees to pray,” Jules said as Max put his head down and waited for the dizziness to pass. “That excuse sounds a little more believable, if you want to know the truth. ‘Hello God? It’s me, Max. I know I’ve been lax in my attention to You over the past forty-mmph years, but if You give me a second chance, I’ll make absolutely certain this time around I’ll tell Gina just how much I love her. Because withholding that information sure as hell didn’t do either of us one bit of good, now did it?’” “I did what I—“ Max stopped himself. To hell with that. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.” “That’s right, you don’t.” Jules ignored Max’s attempt to push him away, and helped him to his feet. “But you might want to work up some kind of Forgive-Me-For-Being-a-Butthead speech for when you come face to face with Gina. Although, I’ve got to admit that the falling to the knees thing might make an impact. You’ll definitely get big points for drama.

His hands came to her wrists, squeezed reflexively, before he got quickly to his feet. "You're mixing things up." Panic arrowed straight into his heart. "I told you sex complicates things." "Yes,you did.And of course since you're the only man I've been with, how could I knew the difference between sex and love? Then again, that doesn't take into account that I'm a smart and self-aware woman, and I know the reason you're the only man I've been with is that you're the only man I've loved.Brian..." She stepped toward him, humor flashing into her eyes when he stepped back. "I've made up my mind.You know how stubborn I am." "I train your father's horses." "So what? My mother groomed them." "That's a different matter." "Why? Oh, because she's a woman.How foolish of me not to realize we can't possibly love each other, build a life with each other.Now if you owned Royal Meadows and I worked here, then it would be all right." "Stop making me sound ridiculous." "I can't." She spread her hands. "You are ridiculous.I love you anyway. Really, I tried to approach it sensibly.I like doing things in a structured order that makes a beeline for the goal.But..." She shrugged, smiled. "It just doesn't want to work that way with you.I look at you and my heart,well, it just insists on taking over.I love you so much,Brian. Can't you tell me? Can't you look at me and tell me?" He skimmed his fingertips over the bruise high on her temple. He wanted to tend to it, to her. "If I did there'd be no going back." "Coward." She watched the heat flash into his eyes,and thought how lovely it was to know him so well. "You won't push me into a corner." Now she laughed. "Watch me," she invited and proceeded to back him up against the steps. "I've figured a lot of things out today,Brian.You're scared of me-of what you feel for me. You were the one always pulling back when we were in public, shifting aside when I'd reach for you.It hurt me." The idea quite simply appalled him. "I never meant to hurt you." "No,you couldn't.How could I help but fall for you? A hard head and a soft heart.It's irresistable. Still, it did hurt. But I thought it was just the snob in you.I didn't realize it was nerves." "I'm not a snob, or a coward." "Put your arms around me.Kiss me. Tell me." "Damn it." he grabbed her shoulders, then simply held on, unable to push her back or draw her in. "It was the first time I saw you, the first instant. You walked in the room and my heart stopped. Like it had been struck by lightning.I was fine until you walked into the room." Her knees wanted to buckle.Hard head, soft heart, and here, suddenly, a staggering sweep of romance. "Why didn't you tell me? Why did you make me wait?" "I thought I'd get over it." "Get over it?" Her brow arched up. "Like a head cold?" "Maybe." He set her aside, paced away to stare out at the hills. Keeley closed her eyes, let the breeze ruffle her hair, cool her cheeks. When the calm descended, she opened her eyes and smiled. "A good strong head cold's tough to shake off.

I opened the curtain and entered the confessional, a dark wooden booth built into the side wall of the church. As I knelt on the small worn bench, I could hear a boy's halting confession through the wall, his prescribed penance inaudible as the panel slid open on my side and the priest directed his attention to me. "Yes, my child," he inquired softly. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my First Confession." "Yes, my child, and what sins have you committed?" .... "I talked in church twenty times, I disobeyed my mother five times, I wished harm to others several times, I told a fib three times, I talked back to my teacher twice." I held my breath. "And to whom did you wish harm?" My scheme had failed. He had picked out the one group of sins that most troubled me. Speaking as softly as I could, I made my admission. "I wished harm to Allie Reynolds." "The Yankee pitcher?" he asked, surprise and concern in his voice. "And how did you wish to harm him?" "I wanted him to break his arm." "And how often did you make this wish?" "Every night," I admitted, "before going to bed, in my prayers." "And were there others?" "Oh, yes," I admitted. "I wished that Robin Roberts of the Phillies would fall down the steps of his stoop, and that Richie Ashburn would break his hand." "Is there anything else?" "Yes, I wished that Enos Slaughter of the Cards would break his ankle, that Phil Rizzuto of the Yanks would fracture a rib, and that Alvin Dark of the Giants would hurt his knee." But, I hastened to add, "I wished that all these injuries would go away once the baseball season ended." ... "Are there any other sins, my child?" "No, Father." "For your penance, say two Hail Mary's, three Our Fathers, and," he added with a chuckle, "say a special prayer for the Dodgers. ...

You say respect my elders, but what you mean is respecting my betters, is that not right? Are you so full of your own arrogance that you need me to bow and kowtow to you like some throwback fledgling? Or perhaps we should reinstate the role of concubines in our society. Then you may have the pleasure of claiming me and forcing me to fall to my knees, bowing low in respect of your masculine eminence!” Gideon watched as she did just that, her gown billowing around her as she gracefully kneeled before him, so close to him that her knees touched the tips of his boots. She swept her hands to her sides, bowing her head until her forehead brushed the leather, her hair spilling like reams of heavy silk around his ankles. The Ancient found himself unusually speechless, the strangest sensation creeping through him as he looked down at the exposed nape of her neck, the elegant line of her back. Unable to curb the impulse, Gideon lowered himself into a crouch, reaching beneath the cloak of coffee-colored hair to touch her flushed cheek. The heat of her anger radiated against his touch and he recognized it long before she turned her face up to him. “Does this satisfy you, my lord Gideon?” she whispered fiercely, her eyes flashing like flinted steel and hard jade. Gideon found himself searching her face intently, his eyes roaming over the high, aristocratic curves of her cheekbones, the amazingly full sculpture of her lips, the wide, accusing eyes that lay behind extraordinarily thick lashes. He cupped her chin between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, his fingertips fanning softly over her angrily flushed cheek. “You do enjoy mocking me,” he murmured softly to her, the breath of his words close enough to skim across her face. “No more than you seem to enjoy condescending to me,” she replied, her clipped words coming out on quick, heated breaths. Gideon absorbed this latest venom with a blink of lengthy lashes. They kept their gazes locked, each seemingly waiting for the other to look away. “You have never forgiven me,” he said suddenly, softly. “Forgiven you?” She laughed bitterly. “Gideon, you are not important enough to earn my forgiveness.” “Is your ego so fragile, Legna, that a small slight to it is irreparable?” “Stop talking to me as if I were a temperamental child!” Legna hissed, moving to jerk her head back but finding his grip quite secure. “There was nothing slight about the way you treated me. I will never forget it, and I most certainly will never forget it!

Leaving my empty goblet, I slide from the soft pile at his order. I can already feel the desire bursting from between my thighs as I fall to all fours and begin my crawl to where he has seated himself. “We will begin as before—you will be spanked over my knee—but this time there will be little pleasure in it for you, my captive. I intend to hurt you—to mark that pretty little behind—and make you unable to sit properly for some time.” I am back by his feet as he concludes and warily, I raise my eyes as he finishes the sentence. I know I am not hiding the terror in my face and yet still I am compelled to carry on—submitting myself to him in this way for our mutual need. He catches my hair in his left hand and pulls it into a rough ponytail, again drawing my head back. “When my hand is aching from tanning your backside, I will bind you to the bedpost and continue to thrash you with my strap. Do you understand?” He eyes me wildly and for a moment I am too afraid to even respond. I have to swallow hard again to find my voice. “Please, my Lofðungr,” I say shakily. “I do not know if I can bear such a punishment?” He never takes his eyes from me as he answers. “You can and you will, my sweeting,” he says. “You will submit to me in this way as a sign of your true desire to be mine.” I close my eyes at his words, understanding for the first time his real intention. He means not just to punish me, but to mark and possess me in some meaningful way. To make me his again in the way that our coupling had done before. As I open my eyes again and see him standing over me, there are tears but also a new acceptance. I nod my head as best I can whilst he is still holding my hair in his fist. “I will bear it,” I say, my voice breaking. He leans in toward me, his face just an inch from mine, those blue pools burning into me. “You will bear it,” he replies, his hot breath against my face, “and I will love you for it.

It isn’t pretty, he wanted to say, it’s lonely, it’s desolate, it’s a chilling portrait of vastness. How ignorant are you to look at this and diminish it to some kind of trinket, are you dead? It’s the human condition! It’s the entire universe itself! It’s the depths of spacetime you utter fucking philistine and how dare you, how fucking dare you stand there and fail to weep? What kind of sad, unremarkable nothingness have you so callously lived that you can witness the splendor of her existence and not fall to your knees for having missed it, for having misunderstood it all this time? Pretty, that’s what you think this is? You think that’s all she’s capable of? You fool, she’s done the impossible. She has explained everything there is to know about the world in less than the time it took for your eyes to fully focus, and do you realize that I will spend a lifetime trying to do the same and never come close? This is an opus!, this is a triumph!, this is the meaning of life and you would think the answer would be satire, but it isn’t, it’s Truth. She told the Truth like you could never dream of telling it, and I pity you, that you could see the inside of your own soul and reduce it like this, so pitilessly. So carelessly. With the vacuous deficiency of, Oh, this is pretty.

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you, I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,) I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems, Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems, Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears, Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids, Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges, Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition, Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue, Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest, Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones, Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails, Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side, Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone, Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root, Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above, Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg, Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel; All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female, The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean, The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame, Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity, Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman, The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings, The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud, Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming, Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening, The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes, The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair, The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body, The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out, The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees, The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones, The exquisite realization of health; O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, O I say now these are the soul!

Who's the Devil?" Frances crouches down as if she were talking to Trixie. "That's something I'll never tell you, Lily, no matter how old you get to be, because the Devil is shy. It makes him angry when someone recognizes him, so once they do the Devil gets after them. And I don't want the Devil to get after you." "Is the Devil after you?" "Yes." "Jesus can beat the Devil." "If God wants." "God is against the Devil." "God made the Devil." "Why?" "For fun." "No, to test us." "If you know, why are you asking me?" "Daddy says there's no such thing as the Devil, it's just an idea." "The Devil lives with us." "No he doesn't." "You see the Devil every day. The Devil hugs you and eats right next to you." "Daddy's not the Devil." "I never said he was. ..." Frances has got a dry look, tinder in the eye; her voice is a stack of hay heating up at the center, her mouth a stitched line. "I'm the Devil." This is the moment Lily stops being afraid of anything Frances could ever say or do again. Stops being afraid of anything at all. She reaches out and takes Frances's hand. The white hand that always smells of small wildflowers, lily of the valley. The hand that has always done up Lily's buttons and laces, and produced wondrous objects. She holds Frances's hand and tells her, "It's okay, Frances.

The sorceress walked a short distance away, her rounded hips swaying. She lifted her hands, fingers moving as if plucking invisible strings. Bitter cold flooded out, the sand crackling as if lit by lightning, and the gate that erupted was massive, yawning, towering. Through the billowing icy air flowed out a sweeter, rank smell. The smell of death. A figure stood on the threshold of the gate. Tall, hunched, a withered, lifeless face of greenish grey, yellowed tusks thrusting up from the lower jaw. Pitted eyes regarded them from beneath a tattered woollen cowl. The power cascading from this apparition sent Equity stumbling back. Abyss! A Jaghut, yes, but not just any Jaghut! Calm – can you hear me? Through this howl? Can you hear me? An ally stands before me – an ally of ancient – so ancient – power! This one could have been an Elder God. This one could have been…anything! Gasping, fighting to keep from falling to one knee, from bowing before this terrible creature, Equity forced herself to lift her gaze, to meet the empty hollows of his eyes. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You are Hood.’ The Jaghut stepped forward, the gate swirling closed behind him. Hood paused, regarding each witness in turn, and then walked towards Equity. ‘They made you their king,’ she whispered. ‘They who followed no one chose to follow you. They who refused every war fought your war. And what you did then – what you did—’ As he reached her, his desiccated hands caught her. He lifted her from her feet, and then, mouth stretching, he bit into the side of her face. The tusks drove up beneath her cheek bone, burst the eye on that side. In a welter of blood, he tore away half of her face, and then bit a second time, up under the orbitals, the tusks driving into her brain. Equity hung in his grip, feeling her life drain away. Her head felt strangely unbalanced. She seemed to be weeping from only one eye, and from her throat no words were possible. I once dreamed of peace. As a child, I dreamed of—

I walk outside and the green on the trees seems greener, so potent I can almost taste it. Maybe I can taste it, and it is like the grass I decided to chew when I was a child just to see what it was like. I almost fall down the stairs because of the swaying and burst into laughter when the grass tickles my bare feet. I wander toward the orchard. “Four!” I call out. Why am I calling out a number? Oh yes. Because that’s his name. I call out again. “Four! Where are you?” “Tris?” says a voice from the trees on my right. It almost sounds like the tree is talking to me. I giggle, but of course it’s just Tobias, ducking under a branch. I run toward him, and the ground lurches to the side, so I almost fall. His hand touches my waist, steadies me. The touch sends a shock through my body, and all my insides burn like his fingers ignited them. I pull closer to him, pressing my body against his, and lift my head to kiss him. “What did they--” he starts, but I stop him with my lips. He kisses me back, but too quickly, so I sigh heavily. “That was lame,” I say. “Okay, no it wasn’t, but…” I stand on my tiptoes to kiss him again, and he presses his finger to my lips to stop me. “Tris,” he says. “What did they do to you? You’re acting like a lunatic.” “That’s not very nice of you to say,” I say. “They put me in a good mood, that’s all. And now I really want to kiss you, so if you could just relax--” “I’m not going to kiss you. I’m going to figure out what’s going on,” he says. I pout my lower lip for a second, but then I grin as the pieces come together in my mind. “That’s why you like me!” I exclaim. “Because you’re not very nice either! It makes so much more sense now.” “Come on,” he says. “We’re going to see Johanna.” “I like you, too.” “That’s encouraging,” he replies flatly. “Come on. Oh, for God’s sake. I’ll just carry you.” He swings me into his arms, one arm under my knees and the other around my back. I wrap my arms around his neck and plant a kiss on his cheek. Then I discover that the air feels nice on my feet when I kick them, so I move my feet up and down as he walks us toward the building where Johanna works.

The gnarled pine, I would have said, touch it. This is China. Horticulturalists around the world have come to study it. Yet no one has ever been able to explain why it grows like a corkscrew, just as no one can adequately explain China. But like that tree, there it is, old, resilient, and oddly magnificent. Within that tree are the elements in nature that have inspired Chinese artists for centuries: gesture over geometry, subtlety over symmetry, constant flow over static form. And the temples, walk and touch them. This is China. Don't merely stare at these murals and statues. Fly up to the crossbeams, get down on your hands and knees, and press your head to the floor tiles. Hide behind that pillar and come eye to eye with its flecks of paint. Imagine that you are the interior decorator who is a thousand years in age. Start with a bit of Tibetan Buddhism, plus a dash each of animism and Taoism. A hodgepodge, you say? No, what is in those temples is an amalgam that is pure Chinese, a lovely shabby elegance, a glorious new motley that makes China infinitely intriguing. Nothing is ever completely thrown away and replaced. If one period of influence falls out of favor, it is patched over. The old views still exist, one chipped layer beneath, ready to pop through with the slightest abrasion. That is the Chinese aesthetic and also its spirit. Those are the traces that have affected all who have traveled along China's roads.

All these thoughts flashed through Amelia’s mind in one searing mass. But as she stiffened and waited for the ax to fall, Rohan came to her in two long strides. And before Amelia could move, or think, or even breathe, he had jerked her full length against him, and pulled her head to his. Rohan kissed her with an indecent frankness that sent her reeling. His arms were firm around her, keeping her steady while his mouth caught hers at just the right angle. Her hands moved in tentative objection, her palms encountering the tough muscles of his chest, the catch of his shirt buttons. He was the only solid thing in a kaleidoscopic world. She stopped pushing as her body absorbed the arousing details of him, the hard masculine contours, the fresh outdoors scent, the sensuous probing of his mouth. She had relived his kiss a thousand times in her dreams. She just hadn’t realized it until now. Graceful fingers cupped around her neck and jaw, turning her face upward. The tips of his fingers found the fine skin behind her ears, where it met the silken edge of her hairline. And all the while he continued to fill her with concentrated fire, until the inside of her mouth prickled sweetly and her legs shook beneath her. He used his tongue delicately, exploring without haste, entering her repeatedly while she clung to him in bewildered pleasure. His mouth lifted, his breath a hot caress against her lips. He turned his head as he spoke to whoever had entered the room. “I beg your pardon, my lord. We wanted a moment of privacy.” Amelia turned crimson as she followed his gaze to the doorway, where Lord Westcliff stood with an unfathomable expression. An electric moment passed while Westcliff appeared to marshal his thoughts. His gaze moved to Amelia’s face, then back to Rohan’s. A smile flickered in his dark eyes. “I intend to return in approximately a half hour. It would probably be best if my study were vacated by then.” Giving a courteous nod, he took his leave. As soon as the door closed behind him, Amelia dropped her forehead to Rohan’s shoulder with a groan. She would have pulled away, but she didn’t trust her knees to hold. “Why did you do that?” He didn’t look at all repentant. “I had to come up with a reason for both of us to be in here. It seemed the best option.

Your character and soul, intelligence and creativity, love and experiences, goodness and talents, your bright and lovely self are entwined with your body, and she has delivered the whole of you to this very day. What a partner! She has been a home for your smartest ideas, your triumphant spirit, your best jokes. You haven’t gotten anywhere you’ve ever gone without her. She has served you well. Your body walked with you all the way through childhood—climbed the trees and rode the bikes and danced the ballet steps and walked you into the first day of high school. How else would you have learned to love the smell of brownies, toasted bagels, onions and garlic sizzling in olive oil? Your body perfectly delivered the sounds of Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, and Bon Jovi right into your memories. She gave you your first kiss, which you felt on your lips and in your stomach, a coordinated body venture. She drove you to college and hiked the Grand Canyon. She might have carried your backpack through Europe and fed you croissants. She watched Steel Magnolias and knew right when to let the tears fall. Maybe your body walked you down the aisle and kissed your person and made promises and threw flowers. Your body carried you into your first big interview and nailed it—calmed you down, smiled charmingly, delivered the right words. Sex? That is some of your body’s best work. Your body might have incubated, nourished, and delivered a whole new human life, maybe even two or three. She is how you cherish the smell of those babies, the feel of their cheeks, the sound of them calling your name. How else are you going to taste deep-dish pizza and French onion soup? You have your body to thank for every good thing you have ever experienced. She has been so good to you. And to others. Your body delivered you to people who needed you the exact moment you showed up. She kissed away little tears and patched up skinned knees. She holds hands that need holding and hugs necks that need hugging. Your body nurtures minds and souls with her presence. With her lovely eyes, she looks deliberately at people who so deeply need to be seen. She nourishes folks with food, stirring and dicing and roasting and baking. Your body has sat quietly with sad, sick, and suffering friends. She has also wrapped gifts and sent cards and sung celebration songs to cheer people on. Her face has been a comfort. Her hands will be remembered fondly—how they looked, how they loved. Her specific smell will still be remembered in seventy years. Her voice is the sound of home. You may hate her, but no one else does.

I prop my guitar up against the nightstand. Then I turn toward the bed and fall into it face first. The mattress is soft but firm, like a sheet of steel wrapped in a cloud. I roll around, moaning loud and long. “Oh, that’s good. Really, really good. What a grand bed!” Sarah clears her throat. “Well. We should probably get to sleep, then. Big day tomorrow.” The pillow smells sweet, like candy. I can only imagine it’s from her. I wonder if I pressed my nose to the crook of her neck, would her skin smell as delicious? I brush away the thought as I watch her stiffly gather a pillow and blanket from the other side of the bed, dragging them to . . . the nook. “What are you doing?” She looks up, her doe eyes widening. “Getting ready for bed.” “You’re going to sleep there?” “Of course. The sofa’s very uncomfortable.” “Why can’t we share the bed?” She chokes . . . stutters. “I . . . I can’t sleep with you. I don’t even know you.” I throw my arms out wide. “What do you want to know? Ask me anything—I’m an open book.” “That’s not what I mean.” “You’re being ridiculous! It’s a huge bed. You could let one rip and I wouldn’t hear it.” And the blush is back. With a vengeance. “I’m not . . . I don’t . . .” “You don’t fart?” I scoff. “Really? Are you not human?” She curses under her breath, but I’d love to hear it out loud. I bet uninhibited Sarah Von Titebottum would be a stunning sight. And very entertaining. She shakes her head, pinning me with her eyes. “There’s something wrong with you.” “No.” I explain calmly, “I’m just free. Honest with myself and others. You should try it sometime.” She folds her arms, all tight, trembling indignation. It’s adorable. “I’m sleeping in the nook, Your Highness. And that’s that.” I sit up, pinning her gaze right back at her. “Henry.” “What?” “My name is not Highness, it’s fucking Henry, and I’d prefer you use it.” And she snaps. “Fine! Fucking Henry—happy?” I smile. “Yes. Yes, I am.” I flop back on the magnificent bed. “Sleep tight, Titebottum.” I think she growls at me, but it’s muffled by the sound of rustling bed linens and pillows. And then . . . there’s silence. Beautiful, blessed silence. I wiggle around, getting comfy. I turn on my side and fluff the pillow. I squeeze my eyes tight . . . but it’s hopeless. “Fucking hell!” I sit up. And Sarah springs to her feet. “What? What’s wrong?” It’s the guilt. I’ve barged into this poor girl’s room, confiscated her bed, and have forced her to sleep in a cranny in the wall. I may not be the man my father was or the gentleman my brother is, but I’m not that much of a prick. I stand up, rip my shirt over my head. and march toward the window seat. I feel Sarah’s eyes graze my bare chest, arms. and stomach, but she circles around me, keeping her distance. “You take the bloody bed,” I tell her. “I’ll sleep in the bloody nook.” “You don’t have to do that.” I push my hand through my hair. “Yes, I do.” Then I stand up straight and proper, an impersonation of Hugh Grant in one of his classic royal roles. “Please, Lady Sarah.” She blinks, her little mouth pursed. “Okay.” Then she climbs onto the bed, under the covers. And I squeeze onto the window bench, knees bent, my elbow jammed against the icy windowpane, and my neck bent at an odd angle that I’m going to be feeling tomorrow. The light is turned down to a very low dim, and for several moments all I hear is Sarah’s soft breaths. But then, in the near darkness, her delicate voice floats out on a sigh. “All right, we can sleep in the bed together.” Music to my ears. I don’t make her tell me twice—I’ve fulfilled my noble quota for the evening. I stumble from the nook and crash onto the bed. That’s better.

Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong And lonesome comes up as down goes the day And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin' And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin' And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin' And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin' And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin' And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin' And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm And to yourself you sometimes say "I never knew it was gonna be this way Why didn't they tell me the day I was born" And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin' And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet And you need it badly but it lays on the street And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat And you think yer ears might a been hurt Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush And all the time you were holdin' three queens And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean Like in the middle of Life magazine Bouncin' around a pinball machine And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying That somebody someplace oughta be hearin' But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed And no matter how you try you just can't say it And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth And his jaws start closin with you underneath And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign And you say to yourself just what am I doin' On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin' On this curve I'm hanging On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking In this air I'm inhaling Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard Why am I walking, where am I running What am I saying, what am I knowing On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin' On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin' In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin' In the words that I'm thinkin' In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin' Who am I helping, what am I breaking What am I giving, what am I taking But you try with your whole soul best Never to think these thoughts and never to let Them kind of thoughts gain ground Or make yer heart pound ...

Punish me for my awful pride," she said to him, clasping him in her arms so tightly as almost to choke him. "You are my master, dear, I am your slave. I must ask your pardon on my knees for having tried to rebel." She left his arms to fall at his feet. "Yes," she said to him, still intoxicated with happiness and with love, "you are my master, reign over me for ever. When your slave tries to revolt, punish her severely." In another moment she tore herself from his arms, and lit a candle, and it was only by a supreme effort that Julien could prevent her from cutting off a whole tress of her hair. "I want to remind myself," she said to him, "that I am your handmaid. If I am ever led astray again by my abominable pride, show me this hair and say, 'It is not a question of the emotion which your soul may be feeling at present, you have sworn to obey, obey on your honour.' As he was moving his hand over the soft ground in the darkness and satisfying himself that the mark had entirely disappeared, he felt something fall down on his hands. It was a whole tress of Mathilde's hair which she had cut off and thrown down to him. She was at the window. "That's what your servant sends you," she said to him in a fairly loud voice, "It is the sign of eternal gratitude. I renounce the exercise of my reason, be my master." Julien was quite overcome and was on the point of going to fetch the ladder again and climbing back into her room. Finally reason prevailed. (A few days later...) In a single minute mademoiselle de la Mole reached the point of loading Julien with the signs of the most extreme contempt. She had infinite wit, and this wit was always triumphant in the art of torturing vanity and wounding it cruelly. Hearing himself overwhelmed with such marks of contempt which were so cleverly calculated to destroy any good opinion that he might have of himself, he thought that Mathilde was right, and that she did not say enough. As for her, she found it deliciously gratifying to her pride to punish in this way both herself and him for the adoration that she had felt some days previously. She did not have to invent and improvise the cruel remarks which she addressed to him with so much gusto. Each word intensified a hundredfold Julien's awful unhappiness. He wanted to run away, but mademoiselle de la Mole took hold of his arm authoritatively. "Be good enough to remark," he said to her, "that you are talking very loud. You will be heard in the next room." "What does it matter?" mademoiselle de la Mole answered haughtily. "Who will dare to say they have heard me? I want to cure your miserable vanity once and for all of any ideas you may have indulged in on my account." When Julien was allowed to leave the library he was so astonished that he was less sensitive to his unhappiness. "She does not love me any more," he repeated to himself... "Is it really possible she was nothing to me, nothing to my heart so few days back?" Mathilde's heart was inundated by the joy of satisfied pride. So she had been able to break with him for ever! So complete a triumph over so strong an inclination rendered her completely happy. "So this little gentleman will understand, once and for all, that he has not, and will never have, any dominion over me." She was so happy that in reality she ceased to love at this particular moment.

What’s going on?’ she said. ‘Talk to me.’ ‘I …’ I looked down. I didn’t want her to see me. But Rooney was looking at me, eyebrows furrowed, so many thoughts churning behind her eyes, and it was that look that made me start spilling everything out. ‘I just care about you so much … but I’ve always got this fear that … one day you’ll leave. Or Pip and Jason will leave, or … I don’t know.’ Fresh tears fell from my cheeks. ‘I’m never going to fall in love, so … my friendships are all I have, so … I just … can’t bear the idea of losing any of my friends. Because I’m never going to have that one special person.’ ‘Can you let me be that person?’ Rooney said quietly. I sniffed loudly. ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘I mean I want to be your special person.’ ‘B-but … that’s not how the world works, people always put romance over friendships –’ ‘Says who?’ Rooney spluttered, smacking her hand on the ground in front of us. ‘The heteronormative rulebook? Fuck that, Georgia. Fuck that.’ She stood up, flailing her arms and pacing as she spoke. ‘I know you’ve been trying to help me with Pip,’ she began, ‘and I appreciate that, Georgia, I really do. I like her and I think she likes me and we like being around each other and, yep, I’m just gonna say it – I think we really, really want to have sex with each other.’ I just stared at her, my cheeks tear-stained, having no idea where this was going. ‘But you know what I realised on my walk?’ she said. ‘I realise that I love you, Georgia.’ My mouth dropped open. ‘Obviously I’m not romantically in love with you. But I realised that whatever these feelings are for you, I …’ She grinned wildly. ‘I feel like I am in love. Me and you – this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in a way I have never felt in my fucking life. And maybe most people would look at us and think that we’re just friends, or whatever, but I know that it’s just … so much MORE than that.’ She gestured dramatically at me with both hands. ‘You changed me. You … you fucking saved me, I swear to God. I know I still do a lot of dumb stuff and I say the wrong things and I still have days where I just feel like shit but … I’ve felt happier over the past few weeks than I have in years.’ I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.’ She grabbed the bunch of flowers and practically threw them at me. ‘And I bought these for you because I honestly didn’t know how else to express any of that to you.’ I was crying. I just started crying again. Rooney wiped the tears off my cheeks.

When he reached the doorman, he stopped. “Did you see Miss Christian come in a few minutes ago?” The doorman nodded. “Yes, sir. She got here just before you arrived.” Relief staggered him. He bolted for the elevator. A few moments later, he strode into the apartment. “Kelly? Kelly, honey, where are you?” Not waiting for an answer, he hurried into the bedroom to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, her face pale and drawn in pain. When she heard him, she looked up and he winced at the dullness in her eyes. She’d been crying. “I thought I could do it,” she said in a raw voice, before he could beg her forgiveness. “I thought I could just go on and forget and that I could accept others thinking the worst of me as long as you and I were okay again. I did myself a huge disservice.” “Kelly…” Something in her look silenced him and he stood several feet away, a feeling of helplessness gripping him as he watched her try to compose herself. “I sat there tonight while your friends and your mother looked at me in disgust, while they looked at you with a mixture of pity and disbelief in their eyes. All because you took me back. The tramp who betrayed you in the worst possible manner. And I thought to myself I don’t deserve this. I’ve never deserved it. I deserve better.” She raised her eyes to his and he flinched at the horrible pain he saw reflected there. Then she laughed. A raw, terrible sound that grated across his ears. “And earlier tonight you forgave me. You stood there and told me it no longer mattered what happened in the past because you forgave me and you wanted to move forward.” She curled her fingers into tight balls and rage flared in her eyes. She stood and stared him down even as tears ran in endless streams down her cheeks. “Well, I don’t forgive you. Nor can I forget that you betrayed me in the worst way a man can betray the woman he’s supposed to love and be sworn to protect.” He took a step back, reeling from the fury in her voice. His eyes narrowed. “You don’t forgive me?” “I told you the truth that day,” she said hoarsely, her voice cracking under the weight of her tears. “I begged you to believe me. I got down on my knees and begged you. And what did you do? You wrote me a damn check and told me to get out.” He took another step back, his hand going to his hair. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. So much of that day was a blur. He remembered her on her knees, her tear-stained face, how she put her hand on his leg and whispered, “Please don’t do this.” It made him sick. He never wanted to go back to the way he felt that day, but somehow this was worse because there was something terribly wrong in her eyes and in her voice. “Your brother assaulted me. He forced himself on me. I didn’t invite his attentions. I wore the bruises from his attack for two weeks. Two weeks. I was so stunned by what he’d done that all I could think about was getting to you. I knew you’d fix it. You’d protect me. You’d take care of me. I knew you’d make it right. All I could think about was running to you. And, oh God, I did and you looked right through me.” The sick knot in his stomach grew and his chest tightened so much he couldn’t breathe. “You wouldn’t listen,” she said tearfully. “You wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say. You’d already made your mind up.” He swallowed and closed the distance between them, worried that she’d fall if he didn’t make her sit. But she shook him off and turned her back, her shoulders heaving as her quiet sobs fell over the room. “I’m listening now, Kelly,” he forced out. “Tell me what happened. I’ll believe you. I swear.” But he knew. He already knew. So much of that day was replaying over and over in his head and suddenly he was able to see so clearly what he’d refused to see before. And it was killing him. His brother had lied to him after all. Not just lied but he’d carefully orchestrated the truth and twisted it so cleverly that Ryan had been completely deceived.