“Really. Right when I took your helmet in the tunnel and you first told me your name. Ever since then—” I shrugged. Every day since that one had been a tumble, a long and rocky bounce from the summit of my dim-witted stubbornness. We were here because of Shea’s grace, and because I wanted, to the knurls of my marrow, to become the man that Shea saw whenever he looked at me. That man seemed like somebody special, and I wanted to stretch myself out to fill in the shape of him. To be him for Shea.
