He showed up at my dorm at 9 PM with the expression I was learning to hate – the flat, distant one, the mask that meant he'd already made a decision without me and was here to deliver it like a verdict he expected me to accept quietly.
I knew before he opened his mouth.
"This isn't working."
Three words. Delivered in the doorway of my dorm room with his hands in his jacket pockets and his eyes carefully, deliberately empty. The rehearsed blankness of a man who'd spent the walk over killing every feeling that might stop him from doing what he'd convinced himself was noble.
"Don't."
"You're losing your family. Your mom won't speak to you. Miles is confused. Your campus thinks you're a homewrecker. Your cousin is–"
"Don't you dare stand in my doorway and list my losses like I don't alre
