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And he didn’t deserve a woman as pure and perfect as her. She was brave. In ways he could never be.

He had already transferred more poison to her than he should have. He’d needed that. It had been cathartic. To tell her his story.

There were dark things in that. The survivor’s guilt. The things he didn’t like saying out loud, and he never wanted to burden her with all of that.

It was better to imagine her away from him. Away from here. From all the baggage and the bullshit.

To imagine her happy. But right now, he wanted to walk with her.

They went down a narrow path, through towering pine trees and into a field.

“I want this place to have a little tiny house village. Put a big firepit in the middle. We’ll be able to stage excursions here.”

“It’s funny,” she said. “You’re building a community, whether you recognize it or not. Maybe it isn’t the parades, but it’s bringing people together with a shared objective. Not totally unlike the military, I guess.”

“Well, except without violence.”

“Yes,” she conceded.

“I just am looking forward to being out in nature.”

“You think that’s the only reason you want to do this? I think you still want to connect with people. It’s okay if you don’t recognize that. It’s okay if you can’t. But I think you do.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want or don’t, there are limits. There’s a reason we have a safe word.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. I just think you’re different. Different to how you work. It’s not fair to try and shove you into a box based on who you were thirteen years ago before you saw so much, and experienced so much. We need to stop acting like you’re broken. You aren’t. You’re just different. Changed by what you went through.”

“But that has to be some kind of broken,” he said, the statement welling up from deep inside him. “Because doesn’t it? How could it not be? It’s like everybody changes a little bit in their lives. But maybe just this much.” He held out his hands, his thumb and forefinger spaced apart just enough for him to hold a playing card between them. “You’re not supposed to change completely.”

“Who says? We get one life, yes, but we can stop and decide to live it differently anytime we want to.”

“I didn’t decide, though. We’re different. You deciding to go away to Boston—and I think that’s great, Rory, I do—but it isn’t the same as getting blown to hell and seeing...seeing things you can’t get out of your head.” Fuck. He hadn’t meant to go there.

“I know,” she said. “But what should somebody do when they see those things? Should they stay the same?”

“If there are other people in your life, then I think you should. For them.”

“There is nowhere in wedding vows that says you won’t get sick. That you won’t get poor. You’re supposed to stay together through that. You’re not the one who broke your vows.”

“I changed. She wasn’t obligated to.”

“I think if you love somebody enough, you should. Because I don’t understand how nearly losing your husband doesn’t change you. I’m sorry. I can’t wrap my brain around that. That she came out the other side of that experience entirely the same. Do you think that your mother is the same? I know that Lydia isn’t. When she found out you were injured... Gideon, her world was rocked. She was devastated. She called me sobbing. And all she wanted was to get to your side. I was changed by my father leaving. He didn’t die, he decided to leave. I have been changed by all these little traumas in my life, and she wasn’t changed by her husband getting blown up. I’m sorry. I don’t think that you’re the wrong one. I think changing when you’ve experienced intense trauma just shows that you’re not a sociopath.”

“Cassidy isn’t a sociopath.”

“I don’t have any loyalty to her. All I know is that she hurt you.”

He growled into the back of his throat. “Yes. I guess. But not like you think. Not like you mean.”

“What are you saying?”

“The disturbing thing was finding out that I wasn’t all that in love with her. Once I didn’t want the whole thing, I just didn’t care anymore. I don’t know if that was the drugs or not. I just know I was angry with myself. For being a disappointment. For failing. But that mattered a hell of a lot more than losing her.”

“You didn’t love her.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I can’t love her. Maybe I can’t love anybody. What I loved was the image. That’s fucking scary.”

“You’re different now. It doesn’t matter.”