“Is that why you took my place with Hexam?”
“I took your place with him because I love you.”
Those words, he said them so easily, he couldn’t know what they meant to her. “I told you to walk away from him. Was it guilt that made you stay?”
“Hexam let you go, but it could’ve gone the other way, Squirm. He could’ve hurt you and I wouldn’t have known it until it was too late. Now that I know the only reason you were in that room was to protect me… I can’t let that happen again. I can’t let anyone use me against you. I don’t know how to process guilt. Why is it I can rip a guy’s fingernails out with plyers, listen to him scream, and then go out for burgers without giving it a second thought? But the idea of you in pain because of me… I can’t handle that?”
She understood because she’d lived
