I only had to be patient enough to make them show everyone else.

Chapter 3 — The Edge of the Bed

That night Ingrid slept at the very edge of the mattress, wrapped tight in the blanket, her whole body angled away from me.

When I reached across the dark to touch her hand — just her hand — she flinched so hard I felt something in my chest crack clean down the middle.

I lay there in the dark of my own bedroom, a decorated soldier who had just come home to a wife who recoiled from his touch, and I did the hardest thing I have ever done, which was nothing.

I did not demand.