‘Roula...’ Galen took her arms and held them firmly.
It was a move that might honestly have spun her, only she felt secure rather than confined.
‘Stop,’ he said.
‘It’s my life.’
‘I know it is,’ he said, and it felt as if his two hands were the only things holding her in place on this earth right now.
‘I thought I was prepared.’
‘I know.’
‘You don’t know...’ No one did.
‘Listen to me,’ Galen told her. ‘We’re going to my place.’
‘No.’
‘Yes,’ he insisted.
‘Hiding won’t help.’
‘For a little while it might. I can police your phone and we can lie and watch movies.’
‘They’ll be screaming for me...finding out it was me who informed on my brother...and you want to watch a movie?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what I do every year on the anniversary of my parents’ death.’
He shared so little, and suddenly he was giving her so much.
‘I black out my apartment and watch movies and I wait for the clock to move past...’
‘All that day?’
‘All the moments of a day I can’t even remember.’ He was still holding her arms. ‘Pause with me,’ Galen said. ‘Don’t do this on your own.’