Shiver

"What do you eat?"

"Baby bunnies." She narrowed her eyes, so I grinned and said, "Adult bunnies, too. I'm an equal-opportunity bunny-eater.

Lone Wolf

Scars are just a treasure map for pain you've buried too deep to remember.

This is what I like about photographs. They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.

Mistakes are like the memories you hide in an attic: old love letters from relationships that tanked, photos of dead relatives, toys from a childhood you miss. Out of sight is out of mind, but somewhere deep inside you know they still exist. And you also know that you're avoiding them
.
I wonder if what makes a family a family isn't doing everything right all the time but, instead, giving a second chance to the people you love who do things wrong.

You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal?... A plan.

This is just my way of pointing out that we people who leap without looking are not stupid. We know damn well we might be headed for a fall. But we also know that, sometimes, it's the only way out.

I wonder if the conversations you've never had with someone count, if you've been over them a thousand times in your mind.

The scariest thing in the world is thinking someone you love is going to die.

When the news you don't want to hear is looming before you like Everest, two things can happen.
Tragedy can run you through like a sword, or it can become your backbone. Either you fall apart and sob, or you say, 'Right. What's next?

Because hate's just the flip side of love. Like heads and tails on a dime. If you don't know what it feels like to love someone, how would you know what hate is? One can't exist without the other.

The real power of a wolf isn't in its fearsome jaws, which can clench with fifteen hundred pounds of pressure per square inch. The real power of a wolf is having that strength, and knowing when not to use it.

It just goes to show you: you can put nine insane miles between you and another person. You can make a vow to never speak his name. You can surgically remove someone from your life. And still, he'll haunt you.

The first time someone I loved left me behind... I didn't know how my family would balance. We had been such a sturdy little end table, four solid legs. I was sure we would now be off-kilter, always unstable. Until one day I looked more closely, and realized that we had simply become a stool.

Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence.

There's an honesty to the wolf world that is liberating. There's no diplomacy, no decorum. You tell your enemy you hate him; you show your admiration by confessing the truth. That directness doesn't work with humans, who are masters of subterfuge. Does this dress make me look fat? Do you really love me? Did you miss me? When a person asks this, she doesn't want to know the real answer. She wants you to lie to her. After two years of living with wolves, I had forgotten how many lies it takes to build a relationship.

I didn't think I could possibly love another baby as much as I loved the one I'd already had," I continue. "But the strangest thing happened when I held you for the first time.  It was like my heart suddenly unfolded. Like there was this secret space I didn't even know existed, and there was room for both of you." I stare at her.  "Once my feelings were stretched like that, there was no going back. Without you, it just would have felt empty. Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions, inside the walls of a hospital...

Doubt is like dye. Once is spreads into the fabric of excuses you've woven, you'll never get rid of the stain.

The wolves knew when it was time to stop looking for what they'd lost, to focus instead on what was yet to come.

You know, he told me once, completely exasperated, you've got one glass of water inside your head, with all the tears for a lifetime. If you waste them over nothing, then you won't be able to cry for real when you need to.

When I was younger, my brother told me that he had the power to shrink me to the size of an ant.  In fact, he said, he used to have another sister, but he shrank her down and stepped on her.
He also told me that when you became a grown-up, you were admitted into a private party that was full of monsters and horror movie characters. There was Chucky, drinking a cup of coffee. And the mummy on the cover of the Hardy Boys book that used to freak me out, except he was doing the twist while Jason from 'Friday the 13th' played the alto sax. He told me you stayed at the party as long as you had to, making conversation with these creatures, and that was why adults were never afraid of anything.
I used to believe everything my brother told me, because he was older and I figured he knew more about the world. But as it turns out, being a grown-up doesn't mean you're fearless.
It just means you fear different things.

There's no way to convince her that just because you put half. planet between you and someone else, you can't drive that person out of your thoughts. Believe me. I've tried.

I may not have a degree, but I certainly got an education.

When I was tiny, the county fair came through town. Our parents took us, and got tickets for the rides, even though I was scared to death of all of them. Edward was the one who convinced me to go on the merry-go-round. He put me up on one of the wooden horses and he told me the horse was magic, and might turn real right underneath me, but only if I didn't look down. So I didn't. I stared out at the pinwheeling crowd and searched for him. Even when I started to get dizzy or thought I might throw up, the circle would come around again and there he was. After a while, I stopped thinking about the horse being magic, or even how terrified I was, and instead, I made a game out of finding Edward.
I think that's what family feels like.  A ride that takes you back to the same place over and over.

When I first met Cara, she was twelve and angry at the world. Her parents had split up, her brother was gone, and her mom was infatuated with some guy who was missing vowels in his unpronounceable last name. So I did what any other man in that situation would do: I came armed with gifts. I bought her things that I thought a twelve-year-old would love: a poster of Taylor Lautner, a Miley Cyrus CD, nail polish that glowed in the dark. "I can't wait for the next Twilight movie," I babbled, when I presented her with the gifts in front of Georgie. "My favorite song on the CD is 'If We Were a Movie.'  And I almost went with glitter nail polish, but the salesperson said this is much cooler, especially with Halloween coming up."
Cara looked at her mother and said, without any judgment, "I think your boyfriend is gay.

Me, I was already jaded and tarnished, skeptical that a fantasy world could keep reality at bay.

Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started.

An apology with a defense built in isn't much of an apology.

This isn't a lie, actually. I don't care why Edward left. All I really want to know is why I wasn't enough to make him stay.

Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions.

From time to time you'll see documentaries about low-ranked wolves who somehow rise to the top of the pack - an omega that earns a position as an alpha.  Frankly, I don't buy it.  I think that, in actuality, those documentary makers have misidentified the wolf in the first place.  For example, an alpha personality, to the man on the street, is usually considered bold and take-charge and forceful.  In the wolf world, though that describes the beta rank.  Likewise, an omega wolf - a bottom-ranking, timid, nervous animal - can often be confused with a wolf who hangs behind the others, wary, protecting himself, trying to figure out the Big Picture.
Or in other words:  There are no fairy tales in the wild, no Cinderella stories.  The lowly wolf that seems to rise to the top of the pack was really an alpha all along.

Nurse:  "You look like a pharmaceutical rep.  you can leave samples in the closet."
Joe:  "I'm actually a lawyer."
Nurse:  "My condolences.

It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others.  I love all of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways.  But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child--a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem--and we will tell you the truth.  When something upends the equilibrium--when one child needs you more than the others--that imbalance becomes a black hole.  You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings.  What we really hope is that each child gets a turn.  That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times.
All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side.

It's a good life lesson, whether or. it you ever work with wolves, Edward. No matter what you do for someone- no matter if you feed him a bottle as a baby or curl up with him at night to keep him warm or go him food so he's not hungry- make one wrong move at the wrong moment, and you could become someone unrecognizable.

Joseph Obomsawin, the elder I lived with there, says that those who turn to animals do so because humans have let them down.

Logically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip about logic. You just really miss holding your big brother's hand.

But Edward doesn't even flinch; it's as if he's reading the text of me with some magic internal Rosetta stone that makes him understand what I say is not what I mean at all.

My mother and Joe have a lovers' shorthand, an economy of gestures that comes when you are close enough to someone to speak their language. I wonder if my mother and father ever had that, or if my mother was always just trying to decipher him.

The Thai people are pathologically shy. Combine that with a reluctance to lose face by giving a wrong answer, and it makes for a painfully long [ESL] class. Usually I ask the students to work on exercises in small groups, and then I move around and check their progress. But for days like today, when I'm grading on participation, speaking up in public is a necessary evil.
"Jao," I say to a man in my class. "You own a pet store, and you want to convince Jaidee to buy a pet." I turn to a second man. "Jaidee, you do not want to buy that pet. Let's hear your conversation."
They stand up, clutching their papers. "This dog is recommended," Jao begins.
"I have one already," Jaidee replies.
"Good job!" I encourage. "Jao, give him a reason why he should buy your dog."
"This dog is alive," Jao adds.
Jaidee shrugs. "Not everyone wants a pet that is alive."
Well, not all days are successes...

He's too busy living to talk about dying.

In other words, what looks like cruel and heartless from one angle might, from another, actually be the only way to protect your family.

So you see, the real question isn't how I left this world to go to the woods.
It's how I made myself come back.

The problem is, when you make the choice to be a loner you lose that privilege.

Death isn't an individual's choice. It all comes back to what the family needs.

It's always amazed me how, when you don't offer an explanation, other people manage to read something between the lines.

The Madness Of Ian Mckenzie

"We don't fit in, you and me," he said. "We're both oddities no one knows what to do with. But we fit together." He took her hand, pressed her palm to his, then laced their fingers through each other's. "We fit."

I do not think of him as Lord Ian Mackenzie, aristocratic brother of a duke and well beyond my reach; not as the Mad Mackenzie, an eccentric people stare at and whisper about.To me, he is simply Ian.

Ian closed his eyes. Beth watched emotions flicker across his face, the uncertainty, the stubbornness, the raw pain he'd lived with for so long. He didn't always know how to express his emotions, but that didn't mean he didn't feel them deeply.
When Ian slowly opened his eyes, he guided his gaze directly to Beth's. His golden eyes shimmered and sparkled, pupils ringed with green. He held her gaze steadily, not blinking, or shifting away.
"I love you," he said.
Beth caught her breath, and sudden tears blurred her vision.
"Love you," Ian repeated. His gaze  bore into hers harder than Hart's ever could hope to. "Love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you"

Beth stared at the bowl, a fragile piece of the past, such a delicate object in Ian's large, blunt fingers. "Are you certain?"
"Of course I'm certain." His frown returned. "Do you not want it?"
"I do want it," Beth said hastily. She held her hands out for it. "I'm honored." The frown faded, to be replaced by a slight quirk of his lips.
"Is it better than a new carriage and horses and a dozen frocks?"
"What are you talking about? It's a hundred times better."
"It's only a bowl."
"It's special to you, and you gave it to me." Beth took it carefully and smiled at the dragons chasing one another in eternal determination. "It's the best gift in the world."

Ian took it gently back from her and replaced it in its slot. That made sense; in here it would stay safe and unbroken.
But the kiss Ian gave her after that was anything but sensible. It was wicked and bruising, and she had no idea why he smiled so triumphantly.

"Why is she so stubborn? And disobedient?" Cameron barked a laugh. "Because Mackenzies always choose headstrong women. You didn't really expect her to obey you, did you? No matter what the marriage vows say?"

Ian cupped her chin and turned her face up to his. Then he did what he'd been practicing since the night on the train; he looked her fully in the eyes.
He couldn't always do it. Sometimes his gaze simply refused to obey, and he'd turn away with a growl. But more and more he'd been able to focus directly on her. Ian's eyes were beautiful, even more so when his pupils widened with desire. "Have I told you today that I love you?" he asked.
"A few dozen times. Not that I mind."

As a young woman who'd been starved for love much of her life, Beth lapped up Ian's generous outpouring of the words. He'd surprise her with them, catching her as she walked down the hall, pushing her up against a wall, breathing, "I love you." Or he'd tickle her awake and tell her while she tried to hit him with a pillow. The best was when he lay against her in the dark, fingers tracing her body. She treasured his whispered, "I love you."

She heard the echoes of Ian's screams in her head. Beth pressed her forehead to his hands, her heart wrenching. Ian's hands were large, sinews hard under his kid-leather gloves. Yes, he was strong. In the Tuileres Gardens, it had taken both Mac and Curry to pull him away from Fellows. That didn't mean others could try to tear at that strength, try to defeat him. The doctors in the horrible asylum had done it, and now Fellows was trying to.

I'm falling in love with you, she wanted to say into their clasped hands. Do you mind awfully?

Explain to me what loving feels like, Beth. I want to understand.

"...Illegitimate children can be left money, but they can't inherit the peerage."
"You wouldn't want it," Cameron put in. "More trouble than it's worth. And for God's sake, don't murder Hart or I'm next."

"I'm not a bloodhound, your lordships."
"Woof, woof," Cameron said, giving Fellows an evil grin. "Good dog."

She liked to laugh that a young widow who'd just come into a good fortune must be, to misquote Jane Austen, in want of a husband.

What I Did For A Duke

A proper kiss, Miss Eversea, should turn you inside out. It should . . . touch places in you that you didn't know existed, set them ablaze, until your entire being is hungry and wild...It should slice right down through you like a cutlass with a pleasure so devastating it's very nearly pain. It should make you want to do things you'd never dreamed you'd want to do, and in that moment all of those things will make perfect sense. And it should herald, or at least promise, the most intense physical pleasure you've ever known, regardless of whether that promise is ever, ever fulfilled. It should, in fact . . . " he paused for effect, " . . . haunt you for the rest of your life."

She thought that heartbreak might just give his character the shadows and corners and angles it needed to make it truly interesting. To deepen and shape it. She was sorry she would be the one to help make him truly interesting. But she'd never apologize for falling in love with a man who already was.

You shouldn't ask questions when you know at heart you'd prefer not to hear the answers.

He would ask nothing else from life if he would be allowed to protect and cherish her for the rest of his.

What are your pleasures and pursuits, Lord Moncrieffe?" Miss Eversea asked too brightly, when the silence had gone on for more than was strictly comfortable or polite.
That creaky conversation lubricant. It irritated him again that she was humoring him.
"Well, I'm partial to whores."
Her head whipped toward him like a weather-vane in a hurricane. Her eyes, he noted, were enormous, and such a dark blue they were nearly purple. Her mouth dropped, and the lower lip was quivering with shock or... or...
"Whor... whores...?" She choked out the word as if she'd just inhaled it like bad cigar smoke.
He widened his own eyes with alarm, recoiling slightly.
"I... I beg your pardon - Horses. Honestly, Miss Eversea," he stammered. "I do wonder what you think of me if that's what you heard."

He leaned in for a sniff. "Smells like a horse's arse! I've got Ian!"
"No sniffing allowed! We never discussed sniffing! I cry foul!" Ian was outraged.
"I'm not giving you a shilling!"
"Give him a shilling! It's not his fault you smell like a horse's arse!"

So she was to be savagely heartbroken and then poisoned by one of their cook's noxious herbal brews in the space of a few hours? Dante would find inspiration in this day.

And though she could scarcely even feel them, her lips formed the words, and sound emerged, sounding frayed, and small and cracked, forged in her somehow before she was born, since before time, words meant only for him.
"I love you."
Three of the most powerful words in the world offered to one of the most powerful men in London in such a small voice.
And at first she thought nothing at all had happened. He didn't blink. But then she realized she'd somehow set him . . . softly ablaze. Emotion burned from him, and his eyes . . . she would never forget his eyes in this moment.
His hands remained at his sides.
Which is when she noticed they were trembling.
God help her, that's when she felt tears begin to burn at the back of her eyes.
One got away. And she brushed her hand roughly against it.
And the man who never cleared his throat . . . cleared his throat. And his voice, in truth, wasn't a good deal louder than hers.
"Then it's just as well that I love you, Genevieve."

"Of course you're sorry. The first words out of the mouths of men who are caught doing something they're only too happy to continue until they're caught."

There are things the artist intends, and things the viewer sees, and what the viewer sees isn't always what the artist intends. Isn't always apparent upon first viewing.

Everyone needed a reminder to simply look at things and enjoy them, without labeling them.

The Book of Tomorrow

What if we knew what tomorrow would bring? Would we fix it? Could we?

As the rain falls and the sun shines, they grow, grow, grow; minds so open, they go through life aware and accepting, seeing light where there's dark, seeing possibility in dead ends, tasting victory as others spit out failure, questioning where others accept. Just a little less jaded, a little less cynical. Nothing is never nothing. It's always something. 

You shouldn't try to stop everything from happening. Sometimes you're supposed to feel awkward. Sometimes you're supposed to be vulnerable in front of people. Sometimes it's necessary because it's all part of you getting to the next part of yourself, the next day.

I make it easier for people to leave by making them hate me a little.

All families have their secrets, most people would never know them, but they know there are spaces, gaps where the answers should be, where someone should have sat, where someone used to be. A name that is never uttered, or uttered just once and never again. We all have our secrets.

City Hunter

I’m sorry for having you know me, for making you waver. Why my father told me not to love… I fully understand now.


The living should continue living on. That is life.


After it all ends, can’t you tell me once that you will come back to me?


I know better than anyone that every single day is a war for you, and every moment is a struggle, So how can I lean on you? How can I ask you to protect me too? I’m going to become someone that you can lean on. I’m going to become stronger. So I can protect you.

Sleepless In Scotland

Love doesna always mean burning flashes o' passion. Sometimes, it's jus' the warmth o' yer hearts as they beat yer day together." ~Old Woman Nora to her three wee granddaughters on a cold winter's night.

So all we know about Hugh MacLean is that his financial situation is unclear, he has an unknown number of illegitimate children, and the family curse is true. I've caught quiet a prize!

I've never found it helpful to treat fate with a gentle hand. Every time I've stroked, hopin' fer a favor, she's slapped me hand and laughed at me. If ye want something, take fate by the throat and shake it out o' her.

"But what if we find we don't suit?"
"Then ye'll do as the rest o' us and work at suiting."

Fighting lets ye both say wha' needs to be said. Just be sure you fight clean, and dinna bring up old hurts or blame one another.

Perhaps the truth was there was no perfect marriage, just some really good ones.