"You are too," Chase confided quietly, meeting his eyes. "Or else how do you explain the cooking dinners, the making me candy, the walking me places, the rescuing me? Which brings me to twenty-seven. You carry me without question when I really need it with no regard for your own aches. Twenty-eight, I love the way your muscles feel under my hands when I give you massages. Twenty-nine. Just...the way we fit. I don't know how to explain it," he said, at a loss.

"Thirty. That you can tell me stories about the beginning until the end of time," he said, slightly in awe as his shirt fell to the sides. "Thirty-one. You are dead sexy when you're wielding weapons."