Cristina

“Qhuinn stopped breathing, focusing everything he had on the male who had been his best friend and his never-been lover… and the ever-after that was never going to happen.
Even after all the things that had gone on between them, and all the fuckups on his end, which were legendary, Blay still had his back.
“I love you,” Qhuinn blurted into the silence.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Reborn

“I'd better go,” he said, without leaving.
That one eye, the blue one, just kept staring up at him. Bloodshot, with a cut across the brow above it, the thing shouldn’t have been able to focus. But it was.
“I have to go,” Blay said finally.
Without leaving.
Damn him, he didn't know what the hell he was doing—
A tear escaped from that eye. Welling up along the lower lid, it coalesced at the far corner, formed a crystal circle, and grew so fat it couldn't hold on to the lashes. Slipping free, it meandered downward, getting lost in dark hair at the temple.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Reborn

“You almost died tonight, he wanted to say. You dumb son of a bitch, you nearly died ... and then what would we have done?

And not “we” as in the Brotherhood.

Not even “we” as in he and John.

More like … “me”.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Reborn

“No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given. Enough, Qhuinn thought. Enough with the excuses, and the avoidance, and the trying to be someone, anyone else. Even if he got shanked, even if his precious little ego and his dumb-ass little heart got shattered into a million pieces, it was time to stop the bullshit. It was time to be a male.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Reborn