“Because if this—” He stops, draws in a breath, and begins again. “If I don’t make it, I want you to know—” He coughs, and in a jagged, deep voice that scrapes softly across my skin, he says, “I want you to know that you are the most beautiful thing in the world, and even if I couldn’t have you, and even though I fucked it up, you were the best thing that ever happened to me.”
