You can love anyone. Love is just caring about someone very deeply. Feeling like that
person matters to you, like your whole world would be sadder without them in it.

I wished to no longer hear the grayed bones crunching underneath the brush or feel the now inexorable fear that seemed to work its way inside my rib cage, rocking me at my core.

I let the wound fester and grow, feeding on the silence between us. I learned then a crucial truth: that a relationship between two people can be judged by the list of things unspoken between them.

I loved my mother too,' I said. 'I still do. That's the thing - it never goes away, even if the person does.

You’re Eve Dallas. You’re the love of my life. My heart and soul. You’re a cop, mind and bone. You’re a woman of strength and resilience. Stubborn, hardheaded, occasionally mean as a badger, and more generous than you’ll admit.

Did she know, could she know what it meant to him when she turned to him, when she opened herself to him like this? In absolute trust. Her strength, her valor remained a constant wonder to him, as did her unrelenting determination to defend those who could no longer defend themselves. These moments, when she allowed her vulnerabilities, her doubts, her fears to tremble to the surface compelled him to take care. In these moments he could show her it wasn’t just the warrior he loved, he treasured, but the woman, the whole of her. The dark and the light.