God, he was probably too young to be this old, but life had a way of being about experience, rather than calendar days.

Will you get off me!" "But I'm giving you CPR-" "I will die before kissing you, Hollywood." Z tried to sit up, his breathing heavy. "Don't even think about it.

Often people with fine countenances and fit bodies were mistakenly assumed by others to have the brains to match.

Whoa. Fangs. She had fangs. She leaned in, prodded them a little. Eating with those puppies was going to take some getting used to, she thought. On impulse, she brought up her hands, turned her fingers into claws. Hissed. Cool.

Those eerie diamond eyes shifted over to her and she stilled, as if he's willed her to do so. There was a moment of silence. And then in a rough voice the man whose life she saved spoke four words that changed everything...changed her life, changed her destiny: "She. Comes. With. Me.

It's not big," Veck said, "but it's flawless. That was important to me. I wanted to give you something...flawless

The sense that in his mother's view, he had let down his family just by being who he was... was a failure of acceptance that he was never going to get over. He just wanted to live, honestly and out front, with no apology. Like everyone else. To love who he loved, be who he was… but society had a different standard, and as he always feared, his parents were a part of that.