“So where—?" asked Robin. "I'm taking you to the Ritz for champagne," said Strike. "Are you serious?" "Yeah. It's why I'm wearing you a suit." For a moment Robin simply looked at him, then she reached up and hugged him tightly. Surrounded by banked flowers, both remembered the hug they'd shared at the top of the stairs on her wedding day, but this time, Robin turned her face and kissed Strike deliberately on the cheek, lips to stubble. "Thanks, Strike. This really means a lot." And that, thought her partner, as the two of them headed away toward the Ritz in the golden glow of the early evening, really was well worth sixty quid and a bit of an effort . . . Out of his subconscious rose the names Mazankov and Krupov, and it was a second or two before he remembered where he'd heard them, why they sounded Cornish, and why he thought of them now. The corners of his mouth twitched, but as Robin didn't see him smiling, he felt no compulsion to explain.” SweetRomanticEndingFriends To LoversSpoilersOtp Book:Troubled Blood Source: Troubled Blood
“Mostly Strike was savoring the pleasure it had given him to hear Robin return his declaration of affection.” FeelingsRelationshipSweetRomanticAffectionFriends To LoversDeclaration Of LoveOtp Book:Troubled Blood Source: Troubled Blood
“Now she hesitated, wondering whether she dare do what she wanted . . . but surely, if they were best friends, it was all right?” NervousBest FriendsHesitationUnsureFriends To LoversLeap Of FaithOtp Book:Troubled Blood Source: Troubled Blood
“And now, full of whisky, he remembered holding her on the stairs at her wedding. This was the closest they'd come to that moment in nearly two years, and the air seemed thick with unspoken things, and again, he felt as though he stood on a small platform, ready to swing out into the unknown. Leave it there, said the surly self that coveted a solitary attic space, and freedom, and peace. Now, breathed the flickering demon the whisky had unleashed, and like Robin a few minutes previously, Strike was conscious that they were sitting mere feet from a double bed.” RelationshipEmbraceIntimacyTake A ChanceFriends To LoversLeap Of FaithOtp Book:Troubled Blood Source: Troubled Blood
“How could he say, look, I've tried not to fancy you since you first took your coat off in this office. I try not to give names to what I feel for you, because I already know it's too much, and I want peace from the shit that love brings in its wake. I want to be alone, and unburdened, and free. But I don't want you to be with anyone else. I don't want some other bastard to persuade you into a second marriage. I like knowing the possibility's there, for us to, maybe . . . Except, it'll go wrong, of course, because it always goes wrong, because if I were the type for permanence, I'd already be married. And when it goes wrong, I'll lose you for good, and this thing we've built together, which is literally the only good part of my life, my vocation, my pride, my greatest achievement, will be forever fucked, because I won't find anyone I enjoy running things with, the way I enjoy running them with you, and everything afterward will be tainted by the memory of you. If only she could come inside his head and see what was there, Strike thought, she'd understand that she occupied a unique place in his thoughts and in his affections. He felt he owed her that information, but was afraid that saying it might move this conversation into territory from which it would be difficult to retreat. But from second to second, sitting here, now with more than half a bottle of neat whisky inside him, a different spirit seemed to move inside him, asking himself for the first time whether determined solitude was what he really wanted, for evermore.” RelationshipFriends To LoversUnspoken FeelingsIt S ComplicatedConflictedSomething More Book:Troubled Blood Source: Troubled Blood
“She waited for him to say something else, suddenly acutely aware, as she'd never been before, that a bed lay directly above them, barely two minutes from where they sat. And, like Strike, she thought, everything I've worked and sacrificed for is in jeopardy if I take this conversation to the wrong place. Our relationship will be forever marred by awkwardness and embarrassment. But worse than that, by far: she was scared of giving herself away. The feelings she'd been denying to Matthew, to her mother, to Ilsa and to herself must remain hidden.” RelationshipFriends To LoversSexual TensionUnspoken FeelingsRomantic TensionIt S ComplicatedFear Of Intimacy Book:Troubled Blood Source: Troubled Blood