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Hollis knew then that he couldn’t give this up. He needed this in a real way and he wasn’t ashamed of it, it wasn’t in his nature to feel ashamed. Like being born to drink gasoline on a planet of people who needed water.

He wondered if Walt had felt that way too. Living rough in the final years of that brittle last millennium, did Walt lie in bed in his tenement and stare at his ceiling in the middle of the night and just feel thirsty? Off-balance without Hollis crowded in beneath his skin.

It was greedy. But Hollis had been greedy before.