That’s why I ran into that house.

That’s the whole reason I have these scars you tried to make a room full of strangers laugh at tonight.

I wanted you alive.”

Her face twisted, and she said the cruelest and truest thing she had ever said to me.

“I never asked you to save me.”

And I nodded, because it was true, and because I had made my peace with it a long time ago.

“I know,” I said.