Are you gloating inside? That's what this is about, isn't it? Getting me to trust you so you could blow it up in my face!" [...] "I get that you're angry—," said Patch. "I am ripped apart!" I shouted.

I'll be firm," I promised Patch, adopting a no-nonsense expression. "No backing down." By now Patch was full-on grinning. He kissed me again, and I felt my mouth soften its resolve. "You look cute when you're trying to be tough," he said.

The guy I've got my eye on happens to be hot. Off-the-charts hot. Hotter-than-Patch hot.' She paused. 'Well maybe not that hot. Nobody's that hot.

I study her,” Patch said. “I figure out what she’s thinking and feeling. She’s not going to come right out and tell me, which is why I have to pay attention. Does she turn her body toward mine? Does she hold my eyes, then look away? Does she bite her lip and play with her hair, the way Nora is doing right now?” Laughter rose in the room. I dropped my hands to my lap. “She’s game,” said Patch, bumping my leg again. Of all things, I blushed.

Are you keeping anything else from me?” “I’m keeping a lot of things from you.” “Like?” “Like the way I feel about being locked up in here with you. You have no idea what you do to me.

Hank had left me his doomed army, and he’d left Marcie his inheritance. Unfair didn’t begin to cover it.

Patch was in my life for a reason. I needed him. We were two halves of the same whole.