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Axe shook his head "I wasn’t a child when I started going on benders When I’d disappear for nights at a ti his heart as round his jaw "The, ah … the night he died? I was out in the city, I’d been high for … shit, for three, four days at that point, bouncing between cocaine and heroin like the tere a circus ride"

"You couldn’t have saved him," she whispered "I don’t even need to know the particulars But you couldn’t have saved hiive yourself--"

"He called e on ht when it happened You want to kno I knohat time it was? Because I bue? I erased it I fucking …"

Axe looked away, hiding his eyes

"Axe, you were not responsible for yourhim And you were not responsible for his death, either--"

"Is that what they teach in all those psych classes you took?" He sniffed up hard and rubbed his face into the crook of his elbow "To placate everyone even though they rong and bad? You know, give ’eh in reality they’re fucking shitheads who let people down?"

Elise looked at him steadily and wished he would meet her eyes "No, they teach us that self-hatred is a self-fulfilling prophecy"

"What’s that supposed to o of the responsibility for your parents’ relationship and choices, you are going to see everything through a pris to eat yourself alive"

"But I erased his e" He scrubbed his face with a hard hand "The last thing he said on the planet, I let it go like it orthless I’m no different than she was I left him when he needed ht to save Rhage? You just had to be there for so stop you?"

He was quiet "Maybe"

"We find ways of repeating things until we get the to fix things we never should have owned in the first place"