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“What’s—what are you doing?” I asked, my voice croaky with sleep. I wiped at my face.
“Watching you sleep.”
“Mmm,” I mumbled. “Didn’t plan on that.”
“See, the couch isn’t as bad as you thought,” he said, still not looking at me.
Another bomb went off, destroying a spaceship and everyone in it.
“Why isn’t the sound on?”
“Didn’t want to wake you,” he said. “I know how it ends.” He looked my way finally, with tired eyes. “Everyone dies.” After the longest of moments, he focused back on the movie. “I took your dog out. He shits like a gorilla.”
I chuckled, and we settled into a weird quiet, watching a movie collectively with no sound.
“You would have waited for me,” he said finally, his voice breaking the silence.
“What?”
There was a pause that made my ears ring.
“When I went to prison,” he said quietly. “You would have waited. Put your life on hold.”
My heart thudded against my ribs. “Yes.”
He nodded, like I’d just made his point. “I couldn’t let you do that.”
A bitter laugh escaped my throat. “It wasn’t your decision to make, oh Saint Adam, to—”
“No.” His voice boomed suddenly, and fiery green eyes met mine. “There was nothing saintly about it. It wasn’t selfless. It was just as much about me as it was about you. More, if I’m being honest, because if I’d let myself read even one of those letters, I would have caved. Had hope. Something to look forward to. Something to lose.”
My eyes filled with hot tears at the admission, and my head spun. What was he saying? “And that would have been bad?”
“Deadly,” he growled. “Weakness is a disease in there, Faith. It’s animals against animals, and they sniff it out. They’ll rip you apart just to expose it. To expose you. To own you.” He fisted the remote, turning up the sound just as three people were mowed down by laser bullets.
I stared at his stony profile for several long seconds, digesting his words. I had no clue what prison was like for him. I thought I did, but I really didn’t. It felt like I was catching a glimpse of the agony he’d suffered for the very first time. And while I got that, it wasn’t that simple. Not now. “So you—?”
He flashed me a pained look, full of fire, that matched my own. “I walked away to save us both.”
