The morning after the trial, I woke up feeling like I had barely slept. The events of the previous day hung over me like a dark cloud. Despite everything Xavier had done, the fact that I had played a part in sentencing someone I once cared about to death was hard to accept. His trial had brought a form of justice, but it had also opened a wound I wasn’t sure would ever heal. My mind kept replaying the part of him that I had cared about in my head. The times he made me laugh so very hard, the times he said something sweet and insightful, the times he reacted the way I would have loved to see people react when I speak. The way he’d acted like I always had something interesting to say, he was always listening. I thought of him cheering me up when I was feeling down. I thought of him teaching
