I sit down on the top step. Think. Then think some more.

Then decide out loud, “Normally, I wouldn’t ask anyone to tell me anything if they weren’t comfortable with it. But if you’re willing, yes, I think hearing your back story might help me process all of this.”

I tell him that, and this time it’s me who chases down his eyes…and holds his gaze.

Several moments tick by. He’s standing the kind of still where anything could happen.

But in the end, he sits down next to me on the top step and says, “My mom…she wasn't the best. And it took her until I was in my 20s for her to kill herself with all the drugs she was taking. My dad left town after she got knocked up. And my abuela tried to take me when she could—gave me a little religion. But she died, so there wasn’t anybody to take care of me when my mom disappeared. And we lived in Nashville proper, not the compound like Colin and all of them. You gotta go to school with teachers and counselors, and they notice shit like that. My mom lost me a few times. I had to live in other places. Some of them good, some of them whatever. But one of them was bad. Let's just say you ain't the only one who got touched without wanting it.”

My heart cracks. Just splits apart inside my chest.

But when I reach out to touch him, to try to comfort him, he says, “Don’t. That’s not why I’m telling you all of this. I just want you to understand, not feel sorry for me.”

My first instinct is to tell him I’m not feeling sorry for him. My response is fully empathetic without any judgment like pity involved. But I sense that wouldn’t be helpful.

You can explain the healthful benefits of what’s inside a needle all you want to patients. But some of them just have to close their eyes to receive their shot.

“Anyway, if you’re wondering why I’m so fucked up, there you go,” he says, continuing on. “I don’t trust anybody or anything except for my own gut. I don’t ever try to get close with women. You’re the exception to that rule….”

He rubs a hand over his face as if he’s reciting a long exhaustive list, and he just has to get through it. “And I got the same reflex you got. Only I carry a gun. Somebody crosses me. Somebody pisses me off. I dead them. And that’s just me.”

I think about what happened at the roadhouse in a new light. How he apologized, not for killing a man but for letting one touch me. And my stomach sinks with a new level of understanding about his response.