Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #8)

by J.R. Ward

People felt the way they did and it wasn’t their fault or yours if the connection was one-sided. It just . . . was.

“Far better to be uninterested than unfulfilled. One is a relief. The other an emptiness with heavy weight.”

“You’re not half the male you could be because of what was done to you. You’re twice what anyone else is because you survived.”

You know, life put you in places you never expected.

Survivors of similar wrecks could see the horrors of those jagged shoals in the eyes of others. It was like recognizing like. It was two people with the same tattoo on their insides, the divide of a trauma that separated them from the rest of the planet unexpectedly bringing a pair of weary souls closer together.

Maybe the Survivors’ Club wasn’t something you “earned,” but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother’s womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest of it was just a question of vocabulary: The nouns and verbs used to describe the events that rocked your foundation and sent you flailing were not always the same as other people’s, but the random cruelties of disease and accident, and the malicious focus of evil men and nasty deeds, and the heartbreak of loss with all its stinging whips and rattling chains . . . at the core, it was all the same.

The essential truth of life, he was coming to realize, wasn’t romantic and took only two words to label: Shit. Happens.

But the thing was, you kept going. You kept your friends and your family and your mate as safe as you were able. And you kept fighting even after you were knocked down. Goddamn it, you dragged your ass off the ground and you kept fighting.

I miss you. I miss you so fucking bad it hurts, but I don’t know how to find you even though you’re right in front of me.

Because of course, “take care of you” was what Qhuinn always said when he was letting someone go.

Life goes on . . . long after the thrill of living is gone . . .

but she was his missing puzzle piece, the twelfth in his dozen, the first and the last pages of his book. And at some level that was all he needed.

You never knew the last time you were seeing someone. You didn’t know when the last argument happened, or the last time you had sex, or the last time you looked into their eyes and thanked God they were in your life. After they were gone? That was all you thought about. Day and night.

Fate was not easy . . . but it got things right. Eventually, everything that came to pass was exactly how it was meant to be.