I never meant to get involved with you, Adrien. Rest easy; you're not.

He was breathing, which is always a good sign. As gently as I could I picked him up, placed him on the towel, wrapped it around him, and put him in my car. I drove to the emergency clinic, the cat purring on the seat beside me. “What’s his name?” the young man at the front desk asked as my towel and cat were whisked to a back room. “Uh…John Tomkins,” I said. “That’s different,” the receptionist said, writing it down. “He was a pirate,” I said. “I mean Tomkins. I don’t know about the cat. (...)

He needed fresh air and sunshine. A walk in the woods and afterward a good book to read by the fire. Yeah, that was the life.

The problem with a life spent reading is you know too much.

He shifted over without comment, lifting the blankets, and I scrambled into the warm sheets beside him. He smelled like soap and sleep and bare skin. He smelled familiar. Not the deja vu familiar of Guy or Mel. Familiar like...the ache in your chest of homesickness, of longing for harbor after weeks of rough seas or craving a fire's warmth after snow--or wanting back something you should never have given away.

Focus on someone else’s problems for a change, I instructed myself. You need the practice. From now on you’ll have to live in a world you didn’t make up. Horrible thought.

I want people to react to my work, to think, to question, to challenge, to cry and laugh and feel.