Marlowe
I found King in the garage, exactly where I'd hoped he'd be, and the second he saw my face he set down his tools and crossed the room without a word.
"Tell me," he said, simple, steady, already bracing for whatever I'd walked in carrying.
I told him everything — Dorian's guilt-soaked deflection, Marla's careful, incomplete honesty, the particular devastating shape of ten years reframed as guilt instead of simple cruelty. My voice broke twice getting through it, and both times King just waited, patient, present, letting me find my way back to the words instead of rushing to fill the silence himself.
"He made a choice," I said finally, the whole weight of it settling heavy in my chest. "Marla wouldn't say what. But it's the reason he can't look at me straight. Not hatred, King. G
