“Is it?” he questions, sounding more pained than I ever would have expected. “Because I keep thinking about how easy it would have been. It would’ve felt so f*****g good to give that son of a b***h what he deserved. The only thing that stopped me was knowing I’d have to come back here and look at you.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I settle for toying with the fraying hem of my sleep shorts.
“I’m trying,” he says into the darkness. “I’m trying so f*****g hard to be someone who deserves—”
He stops. The sentence hangs there, incomplete, like a bridge to nowhere. Someone who deserves what, precisely? Forgiveness? A second chance? Me?
Maybe all of the above. Maybe none of it.
I reach out and touch his knee. The denim of his jeans is warm from his body heat and rough under my palm. He
