“I was protecting you, from me. Lily, will you look at me?”

I stopped pacing and turned to him.

“I woke up in the hospital, and my hands were wrapped around your throat. Your mom was screaming at me to let go, your face was turning purple, and Jed was pulling me off you. I had no idea where I was, or how you even got there. I went to sleep in a desert and woke up in a hospital, and I was killing you. You. You are what I love most in this world, and I almost killed you. I wanted to be with you more than anything I have ever wanted in my whole entire life, and I kept myself away from you to protect you. That is how much I love you.”

I started to see where he was coming from. I’d understood it on a rational level before, but the pain he’d caused me had clouded my judgment, preventing me from fully appreciating his perspective. My heart broke a little bit more when the pain started to fade away and I got a glimpse of how he must have felt when he’d thought he had no choice but to leave.

“But you were having a nightmare. It wasn’t your fault,” I whispered.

“I thought I was losing my mind. I couldn’t trust myself around you. It was too much of a risk. I didn’t know I had PTSD. I didn’t know about flashback nightmares or any of that. I hurt you. I almost strangled you to death. That’s what I knew. That was all I could think about. How could I have done that? I thought about the future, us married, me killing you in my sleep, killing our kids in a dream. Blood and death. I couldn’t get away…” Tears filled his eyes, and he wiped them away.

I moved to stand in front of him and grabbed his hands again. “Stop it. I forgive you. I forgive you, and I demand that you stop punishing yourself,” I cried.

“You forgive me for that morning. Do you forgive me for leaving you?” he asked softly.

“I understand it better now. But I still wish you had let me help you.”

“Help me? How? I was terrified of hurting you again. You are so small, Lily. We are lucky that your mom and Jed were there, that they heard it and stopped it. If we had been alone back then, you would be dead. I would have killed you. And, God, I would have killed Dylan. You were pregnant.”

We both paused as the horror of that possibility dawned on us.

“Forgiving you doesn’t mean that I’m ready to—”

“You’re not ready to trust me,” he interrupted.

“I would trust you with my life. With Dylan’s life. But I’m not ready to trust you with my heart. Can you understand that?”