I wasn‘t—" I began. I didn‘t—" He began. How charming," V‘lane cut us off. His voice arrived before he did. "The very portrait of human domestic bliss. She‘s on the floor, you‘re towering over her. Did he strike you, MacKayla? Say the word and I‘ll kill him.

He was on me before my brain processed the fact that he was coming for me.

He'd surely been spawned by some cataclysmic event of nature, not born.

I looked from one to the other, and realized that Barrons and my dad were having one of those wordless conversations he and I have from time to time. Though the language was, by nature, foreign to me, I grew up in the Deep South where a man’s ego is roughly the size of his pickup truck, and women get an early and interesting education in the not-so-subtle roar of testosterone.

He pulls me around and kisses me. "You're Mac," he says. "And I'm Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?" I do. Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me.

Oooh! Stop that. When you smile at me I want all of it." "What?" He looked confused

There aren't many sins in my bible. Giving up is the greatest one of all.