At first, she was so angry with him she could hardly see. Which was unfair, because this entire situation is at least half her fault, but she can't help what she feels. He promised, anyway, he promised her no more secrets and no more lies.

And if the only reason he kept secrets from her in the first place was because she told him to, she still feels entitled to a little irrational anger.

Anger's better than depression, no matter which way you slice it. Particularly this kind, the kind that clouds her throat and chokes off her breath, the kind that makes her weep silently in the middle of the night until she wakes up with her head aching, feeling exactly the same as she did when she went to bed.

He watches her all the time now, and she can't help but wonder if he's looking for cracks. There's a certain wary quality to his eyes, a certain readiness to flee in his stance that makes her somehow positive he's seen something to fear in her. That he saw something in her soul to frighten him away from her forever.

She's mortally afraid that if he goes, that's it, that's the end.

In the next moment she's chastising herself for being dramatic. He's not going anywhere. Even if he did fear her his own innate sense of chivalry will keep him stubbornly there, firmly by her side against the impossible things they come up against daily.

And that's not at all what she wants. Him staying by her because he feels like he has to...something in her revolts at the idea. Somewhere in those dark nights, vacillating between blinding rage and heartrending despair, she realized that she'd lied to him when she told him it couldn't happen.

Well, she hadn't lied, not really, because what she'd meant was it couldn't happen then. And it couldn't have, not then, because if it had happened she would have screwed it all up and he really would have left, just like every other man she'd ever let herself love. She still would screw it up, she thinks morosely, which is why it probably can't happen ever, because she can't lose this. She can't lose him.

She's terrified that she's lost him anyway.

At least she has that one thin protection; she's never admitted that she might love him, not even in the privacy of her own head. Maybe if she holds away from that, he'll stay. She can survive without sex, after all. She won't be happy about it, but she can survive without it. And she can't without him—well, no, that's not quite right. It isn't that she can't survive without him, exactly. It's more that she doesn't even want to think about living without him there.

He's her best friend. Lately it seems like he's her only friend. He knows that; she saw it in him, in amid the darkness and the anger and the ever-present fear that he'll fall, that he'll become everything they've fought against. He knows on some level that he's all she's got. And that deep, unspoken love she saw in there...

She's afraid. She's afraid that what he saw in her has killed that love. She's afraid he saw what she's become, a sullied, broken thing with no more faith, no more strength left in her, and he's lost that love. She's afraid he only watches her now because he's waiting for the right moment to go. And if she tells him she loves him, he'll only go faster.

She cannot lose him; but something inside her knows she already has.