[ If she'd met him before Knifehead, he would have told her that it's been a long, long time since he last thought about God. When the hull had broken, the hurricane loud beyond the crack in Gipsy, he'd been honestly surprised to realize that it wasn't that he'd stopped believing -- more like, he'd stopped asking unless it was for someone else. Someone who mattered. ]
I'm not going to lie. [ There's a sigh in his voice and he slows down his pace; stops, just to talk. Because she needs this. ] Nothing ever does, Alayne.
It's not fair. [ His mother's hands so frail between his own. Those last heated words from Jazmine at the funeral. The empty space in his chest that he crammed full of everything else that Raleigh was, the hope for his brother that Yancy never bothered to keep for himself because what else is a boy to do when the man he looks up to decides to cut and run, leaving his wife and three kids to pick up the pieces. ] It never is.
( x i i : d 1 )
I'm not going to lie. [ There's a sigh in his voice and he slows down his pace; stops, just to talk. Because she needs this. ] Nothing ever does, Alayne.
It's not fair. [ His mother's hands so frail between his own. Those last heated words from Jazmine at the funeral. The empty space in his chest that he crammed full of everything else that Raleigh was, the hope for his brother that Yancy never bothered to keep for himself because what else is a boy to do when the man he looks up to decides to cut and run, leaving his wife and three kids to pick up the pieces. ] It never is.