Maybe all that had transpired between them only served to cause hurt. Again and again and again. Maybe she's right in telling him that there was so much he didn't know about her. He'd only scratched the surface, kept so much of their interaction so blandly superficial. Maybe he was the problem in all of it. He kept pushing for something that maybe he didn't deserve to have and had twisted her up in all the worst ways.

It was nothing he hadn't thought about before, nothing he wouldn't find himself thinking about again.

The pros and cons always came down the same way. The taste of his guilt verses the taste of her lips. The sound of her voice verses the sound of her silence. Her cruelty verses her kindness. The way his heart beat when he was near her verses how it had that night he watched her die. An echo of freak verse the simple truth. You're my favorite.

"I'm not you. You don't have to trust yourself. I'll do it for you." He takes her hand; he needs that connect as if it will help prove he means it, like it will get through to her. "I trust you, J. I trust you."