I loved Pain. She was great. I adored how she took herself and everything she did so seriously. It was part of her charm. But I found myself sitting there with smirking Alison on my left and the silently slouching Quaid on my right.

There was no way I was holding his hand.

Pain insisted we sit on the floor. "Connects us better to the Earth," she said while I bit the inside of my cheeks and didn't explain to her that a) we were already connected and b) it was kind of ...