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Is there a word for just not trying very hard to avoid ceasing to exist?
He takes a deep breath and looks at me. “That’s where you are, babe. It’s the morning after you got out. You have some decisions to make. And I know it’s hard and it’s scary as hell, but… the morning after you get out… well, not deciding to make a decision is the same as making the decision not to change your life. Not to take responsibility for what happens next.”
“I already feel that, Colin. I already care about you all the time.”
“Armor,” he goes on. “Armor’s not dangerous. That’s for survival. It’s weapons you have to watch out for. And you—” He strokes my lips with his thumb. “It’s mostly armor, Colin. And when you’re with me, the armor falls away. Who you are without it… it’s beautiful.”
Rafe doesn’t say anything to Daniel, just steps right in front of me and pulls my arms around his waist, crushing me to him.
“I think… I need you.”
When I was sixteen and broke my arm, the doctor at the hospital asked me to rate the pain on a scale of zero to ten, with zero being no pain and ten being the worst pain I could imagine. I wanted to look tough, sure. But also I could imagine oceans of pain so vast and incalculable they tipped this to practically nothing. So I told him it was a four. He smirked at me and gave me a pain pill anyway. What was worse than the pain, though, was the fear. When I first crashed Pop’s car, all I felt was pain, and I didn’t know what it meant. Was I going to look down and see that my arm had been torn
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forcing someone to see you the way you see yourself. Forcing them to press their face right up to the ugliness inside and then make the decision about whether they want to go or stay from there. Most people go.
“I knew you were something special that night, Colin. Even though you didn’t.”
There should be a word for living a life so different from anything you ever thought was possible that you don’t even recognize yourself in it.
