Bella pov
He looked at his wine glass. "The way he negotiates, he doesn't ask for things directly — he builds a case first. Circumstantial evidence, precedent, projected outcomes." The corner of his mouth moved. "He's three years old and he constructs arguments, I have no idea where he gets that."
I almost said, you but I stopped myself.
"What did therapy actually do?" I asked instead, I wasn't being cruel. I genuinely wanted to know. "Specifically, what changed?"
He considered it carefully, the way he'd learned to consider things. "I learned why I became who I was. My father. The way I was raised to treat emotion like enemy territory." He leaned forward, elbows on knees. "And then I learned something harder — that what I did to you wasn't an accident born from bad information. It was
