“Not tonight, Sasha,” he amended, and he knew he’d already begun to slip.
“Why?” she asked, and the word twisted in his belly like a sword. He thought he might bleed to death on her floor, confused and wounded, desperate to understand himself and be understood.
“Because I have loved and hated all the wrong people,” he admitted.
“And you don’t know whether to love or hate me?” she asked, her voice almost tender.
“No,” he confessed.
“Darkness or light?” she asked after a moment.
“Light.”
When he didn’t elucidate, she chided him. “It is not enough to choose, Captain. You must explain your choice.”
He sighed, but he didn’t mind terribly. “In the light everything is obvious. There are no secrets. You simply have to look in order to see.”
“What was your mother’s name?” she parried
