Alexandra Bracken

Next time it'll be your nuts.

If she's not alright, I'm going to rip out his heart and eat it." I nodded. "You really shouldn't eat raw meat," Chubs said.

Miss Vida" Liam said "has anyone never told you that you are positively the whipped cream on the sundae of life?"She glared at him."Anyone ever told you your head is shaped like a pencil?""That is physically impossible," Chubs groused."He'd be__""Actually Liam began, "Cole once did try to__ What?""Oh,I'm sorry," Chubs said, "apparently the middle of my sentence interrupted the beginning of yours. Do continue.

Do I look as pretty as I feel?

He said he'd never remarry, because he'd never find another lady that fit so neatly at his side. He called her his equal in spirit.

But part of surviving is being able to move on.

I bet it gets pretty lonely with only your ego for company.

Dressed as a man, her horse unencumbered by anything but the bare necessities, she had the look of a survivor, a fighter, and he respected the hell our of her for it, especially when she slid the pistol out of one of the saddlebags and aimed it at him.

Home isn__ four walls, it__ the people you__e with.

But hey, what's life without a little adversity?"That had to have been the fakest attempt at optimism since my fourth grade teacher tried reasoning that we were better off without the dead kids in our class because it'd mean more turns on the playground swings for the rest of us.

None of this is your fault,' I told him. 'None of it. You aren't responsible for what other people do, good or bad. Everyone is just making the choices they think will help them get by.

It's our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises.

For the longest time, I saw them as the end of my journey, but now I think they were always meant to represent the beginning of yours.

Half-truths only added up to a whole lie.

I knew I wasn't making sence, but I couldn't seem to connect my thoughts to my tongue. That feeling... How did you tell someone that?

I had the strangest feeling -- like I had lost something without ever really having it in the first place -- that I wasn't what I once was, and wasn't at all what I was meant to be. The sensation made me feel hollow down to my bones.

You're missing the point. It's not that I believe in what Lee's saying; it's that I hope he's right. I really, really hope he's right, because what's the alternative?

A moment later, Liam's bright blue eyes opened, and he was seeing me. He just wasn't seeing Ruby.