Close Quarters Quotes

“As we left through the back gates, I marveled a little at just how much things had changed between us. There was a calmness in Reno that, once upon a time, I would have said outright, would’ve been physically impossible for him. Nowadays, he didn’t go around scowling and snapping at every little thing.”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“I stared at him then, taken aback by the sudden squeeze building in my chest, until it felt like I couldn’t breathe. His hair was plastered to the sweat on his forehead, clearly having worked hard to give me the best pleasure he possibly could. His face and chest were flushed, and a bright gleam in his eyes was even brighter than his smile.”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“Sometimes, I saw the way he looked at me with such gentleness and understanding that I wanted to cry and rage against it.”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“I saw plenty of potential in you, Reno, and you’re finally proving me right. Maybe it’s time you start paying attention to the good shit you do and not just the”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“That went beyond begrudgingly finding him tolerable or blatantly admitting he was physically attractive. At what point had I gone from accepting his presence to finding something ridiculous and gross that he’d done…adorable? Sure, I knew now that he wasn’t an idiot, just prone to doing stupid shit that didn’t harm anyone but himself, and there was a lot more to him than just his antics and his rambling mouth but⁠”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“No one had ever cared what I did unless I was making a mess of things, so why not just be the mess everyone already believed I was?”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“I wasn’t exactly the person you came to when you wanted to have someone else’s words picked apart and discover their exact meaning, but I was pretty sure the asshole had just flirted with me. And if that was his way of subtly offering another round down the road, I wouldn’t argue.”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“The last time I tried connecting, really connecting with someone, had ended up with me dating a man I had beaten half to death. Not that it hadn’t been fully justified. Even the arresting officers had been sympathetic”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“Or you have a deficit of attention?” “More like I can’t control my attention,” I told him with a shrug. “Everyone seems to think it’s ‘Oh, ha-ha, he gets distracted by shinies and squirrels,’ but my brain can’t help but not focus on things. Even when I want to focus on something, or when I want to ignore something, my brain doesn’t let me.”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“It was just one more side effect of the little gremlins that lived in my head. Sometimes, instead of letting me react normally, they took the dial on a particular emotion and cranked it up to maximum.”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“People didn’t surprise me often, so I didn’t expect much from them. Generally, you could expect precisely what people showed you, whatever they said otherwise was easy to ignore. People, by their very nature, liked to hide shit that wasn’t all that nice from others and themselves.”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“he was actually cute…when he was quiet. I didn’t know what he’d looked like before coming to the ranch, but now he was built pretty solidly, but that came from the fact that I’d witnessed that he could work as hard as he could talk, which was an impressive feat. There were tattoos, mostly swirling, sharp symbols etched along his arms and chest, and a patch of hair so light you wouldn’t notice until the sunlight caught it and made it shimmer.”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters

“it didn’t help that I was a sucker for red hair, and his was thick and a shade of red rarely seen. And it was real because his thin brows, forever pinched together in varying levels of anger, were a softer red.”
― Romeo Alexander, Close Quarters