Tear filled eyes glisten in the firelight. She’s so fucking beautiful that it hurts to look at her, but it’s an ache I hope to feel for as long as I live, because the pain of losing her again...that I don’t think I’d survive.

He’s so fucking unconventionally perfect. I don’t know whether I want to kick him in the balls or lick his face.

I want to rip the rest of those buttons open and climb him like a monkey in a banana tree. Oh God, what I would do with his banana...

She’s not ready and maybe she never will be, but I won’t stop trying. I’ll be patient if it kills me. I can just see it now. Cooper Hebert died of blue balls and a broken heart.

You’re stupid. First of all, I need for you to know that.” “Uhhh, thanks?” “That is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. What could possibly be more romantic than the man of your dreams swooping in like a white knight? This is your fucking fairytale, bitch, and you’re about to let it slip away...” Gina growls in frustration. Add a note

I find blow jobs to be highly respectable. In fact, I can’t think of many things I respect more than your lips around my cock.

Spence,” he says as he lifts his brown eyes to meet mine. “You still make it hard to breathe.” “And you,” I say, swallowing as I try to rein in my overeager heart, “are still the same old charmer you always were.

Those ties...those ties are forever, and I never wanted to be connected to any other person so permanently. Forever was always meant for you and me, Spence.

I want the strings. I want the ball and fucking chain. I want to be so tied to you that you can’t ever slip away from me again.

that kid may not carry my DNA, but by God, I don’t care. I love that little shit like my own and I want to be his daddy.

My breath catches in my throat as a chill makes me shiver, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. My eyes latch on to his, pleading with him to kiss me.

My mouth crashes onto hers, and as our bodies sway in time to the music, our tongues dance to a rhythm that’s all their own. Spencer tastes of liquor and spearmint gum. She smells like heaven.

through the screen door I find all three of my boys throwing a ball around the yard with Cooper. My heart bursts in my chest. Just explodes. It physically hurts to feel so much all at once. It’s like I’m staring at a movie of what my life—our life—could have been.

I’ll take stolen kisses and trysts in the cane fields for as long as I live over a life without you in it.

for a moment, I stand in the doorway, watching the steady rise and fall of their chests. I listen to the gentle hum of their breaths and I wonder when my little babies started to turn into men. And I pray. I pray that my boys will be good men. That they will know how to treat the women in their lives, and more than anything, I pray to God that they will be good fathers, despite the fact that they’ve had no one to show them how.

How ’bout you take this Cajun injector here,” I say, gripping the steel rod in his shorts, “and give me a shot of protein instead.