Chapter 14: Second Chance

He doesn't ask. He can't — I watch him try three separate times, and each time his throat closes, because a boy whose mother died at eleven and who got handed a girl as a debt payment at twenty-four does not know how to say please don't leave me out loud. So I say it for him. "Fine," I tell him. "Then I'm asking. Ask me to stay, Damien, or I'm going to be extremely humiliated in about four seconds." "Stay," he says. Two seconds later: "Stay. God. Stay." I kiss him so carefully, because...