She didn't say anything. Neither did he. He thought of many things to say. He thought: you could spend your whole life on this and it wouldn't change anything; it would never work; you'd never be able to fix it. He thought: you could do so much more with your life than spend it worrying over a lost cause. He thought: I wish you hadn't loved me — and then he flinched back from it, as though in thinking it he'd grabbed on to something sharp and cut his hand.

A long moment passed. He wrestled with himself and watched Rosalie's posture from behind, paying attention to the tension of each muscle in her shoulder blades.

"I'm going in now," he announced eventually. There wasn't anything to say.

---