You don’t like to talk to people, do you? I mean, slamming the door in my face was a clue that was hard to miss. I’m perceptive like that.

He’d danced around that story about why he’d moved to Terrebonne more smoothly than an Olympic skater on ice.

Jena shook her head. “Paul needs a life.” “Paul needs a woman,” Ceelie said.

How ‘bout you, Jena?” He leaned closer, speaking in an exaggerated whisper. “We could go somewhere private. I know you probably got some scars from being shot, but you can’t see a scar in the dark, right?” The dickwad was offering her a pity fuck in a darkened room?

Jena took a seat on the sofa, and Cole found himself with another dilemma. Should he sit next to her or take the other chair? Such a decision shouldn’t feel momentous, but it did. It felt as momentous as a choice between the past and the future. It felt like a choice between friendship and maybe more than friendship. He sat next to her on the sofa.

Everybody has scars; some are more visible than others, that’s all. But anyone without a scar is someone I don’t want to know because it’s someone who doesn’t feel things deeply. You have to understand loss to recognize a gift when you see it.” He leaned over and kissed her again. “You are my gift. I want to be yours, if you’ll let me.

We have unfinished personal business I do believe.” He smiled. “And I do love to make you blush.” “It clashes with my hair.