“You don’t have to keep trying to pay off an unpayable debt to me, Alexander,” she said quietly.

“I’m not trying to pay off a debt.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“I’m learning how to become a man you could trust,” I said, and I made myself look at her while I said it.

“Even if you never love me again.

Even if this is all it ever is.

I’d rather be that man standing next to you on a sidewalk than the man I was with everything I used to have.”

She looked down at her hands for a while.