Chapter 23: One Chance

I walked down the block to him myself.

It seemed important that I be the one to cross the distance, and not the other way around.

Dario watched me come with his hands at his sides.

He looked thinner, and his coat was buttoned wrong.

"Your mother says you wanted to ask me something," I said.

"I did." He swallowed. "I've practiced it a lot of ways. All of them were too long."

"Then say it the short way."

"One chance, Justine."

He did not add anything.

No flowers, no speech, no ruffling his hair, no list of everything he had changed.

I looked at his face for a while.

I tried to find the boy who had stood in a dining hall and let me introduce him to his own sister, and I could still see him there.

I could also see the man who sat at the head of a table and moved my name one seat over without a word.

They were the same person.

That was what I'd needed to learn.

"No," I said.

He nodded.

It was a small, slow nod, and for once he did not argue it.

"I'm not saying it to punish you," I added. "I thought about it all week. I don't hate you."

"I know."

"I loved you for six years, and I mean that. But I would be coming back to a man who found out what I was worth after I took it away."

"That's fair."

"It isn't fair. It's just true."

He laughed, a short, cracked laugh, and rubbed his face with both hands.

"The round's dead," he said. "Monday. They took the deck apart, slide by slide. They asked who the girl in the picture was, and I told them."

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