A swell of sympathy came over her. He was so smart in some ways and uneducated in others. His college degree hadn’t covered how to build a marriage, and his parents hadn’t taught him how to have the kind he seemed to want. He’d been trying to focus on her every night, but she couldn’t be something pretty he took out and played with and put back away so she wouldn’t get dirty and broken. She’d lived long enough to understand that life could break a person over and over again. The worth of that life was in how a person put herself back together and moved ahead. She smoothed back his hair. “You can’t push me away again. Not even if you think you should. Not even if someone shows up and tells you they’ll kill me if you don’t dump me.”

“Who would do that?”

She shrugged. “It’s overly dramatic, but I’m making a point. If you want this to work, you have to trust me. I have to be more to you than comfort.”

“You are,” he promised softly. “And I won’t ever listen to Dre again. Well, not if he’s trying to keep me away from his sister. I don’t think he’s going to be mad about this, though.” He winced. “I might have asked his permission to go after you when I came to DC, and he might have laughed his ass off that you had a boyfriend. He told me to try again later. I don’t think he’s totally against it, but you should know that even if he had been, I would have taken my chance at some point.”

She wished she could completely believe him. “I wish you had come to me with your troubles. Even when I visited you in the hospital, you told me you were fine.”

“And I made you sit and play games with me. I came up with excuses for you to not leave.”

She shook her head. “You can’t do that now. That’s not the way to have a relationship with me. You have to tell me what you need. It’s the only way I’ll feel comfortable asking you for what I need. I’m giving you a chance. If all you want is to spend a couple of months enjoying each other’s company while you save yours, then I’m okay with that. I’ll be honest, I’ll probably sleep with you because I enjoyed it, but I’ll understand what this is.”

“And if what I want is to be such a good husband you won’t ever want to leave me?”

“Then you have to let me in,” she said. “You have to tell me how you feel and when you hurt. You have to trust me.”

“I trust you more than I trust anyone.”