He fought to concentrate, to get himself under control. He felt as if there were two disparate halves of him warring with one another, the past and present colliding with jarring dissonance. He was who he’d always been, and he was his new self: neither was prepared to deal with the present situation. A situation that his old self would never have let come to pass and which his new self found more than a little appalling. You lost control, and you hurt her, his old self said. Why did you keep so many secrets from her? his new self asked in disgust.
