He counted on the room’s instinct to protect a fragile woman from herself, and he nearly turned every person who loved me into an unwitting guard standing between me and the truth.

I have rarely felt anything as cold as watching him do it, watching him weaponize the worst season of my life with tears in his eyes.

Chapter 16 — Santiago’s Scar Is on Your Hip

For one long, swaying moment, I felt the trap of it close around me, because it was a good trap, built out of real things.

I had grieved badly.

I had said, in the worst of it, that I saw Santiago in his brother.