If you’d been terrified of losing your sons, you would have chosen differently.

You always chose the money, Marcus.

Every single time, right up until it chose against you.” He asked me, faintly, whether there was any chance for us.

And I looked at him for a long moment, at this man I had genuinely, foolishly loved, which was the whole reason it had hurt so much.

“You can work,” I said, “on becoming a decent father to our sons.

I will not stand in the way of that; they deserve it, and so, maybe, do you.