JULIAN

I did not move.

I want to be precise about this because the not-moving was a decision, the specific and deliberate quality of a man who had felt the particular and immediate impulse to move, to close the distance, to do the specific and physical thing that the sight of that scar on her inner wrist had produced in him, and who had held the impulse with the particular and careful quality of a man who understood that what she needed right now was not the closing of the distance but the staying of the table, the specific and present quality of a man who was there and was...