Harper
He knows her too well to take her words in darker, more insidious shades. Though Jude may resemble him in many ways, and though it may hurt Phoebe, Harper knows she loves their son more than anything in this world. It is another chip in his broken heart to know that even in some small way it is tainted, but it’s yet another thing he cannot change.
Harper’s own eyes burn, one hand remaining at the nape of his neck, knuckles white with the force it takes to keep his knuckles knotted in his hair. Even this pain is not enough to drown out what’s going on inside his chest. He gives up, letting his hands drop loose to his thighs, empty and unable to patch her pieces as he’d done so many times before. “It’s just as hard for me,” his voice creaks like straining wood. Not as an argument for whose pain is worse, but in commiseration. “I don’t regret any moment I spent with you, spent loving you. I’ll love you until I die, Phoebe. And I hate that I can’t do it the right way, as I should have been able to.” Because she’d taught him how to move on and love again, and it had only foreshadowed the beginning of the end for them.
Harper’s own eyes burn, one hand remaining at the nape of his neck, knuckles white with the force it takes to keep his knuckles knotted in his hair. Even this pain is not enough to drown out what’s going on inside his chest. He gives up, letting his hands drop loose to his thighs, empty and unable to patch her pieces as he’d done so many times before. “It’s just as hard for me,” his voice creaks like straining wood. Not as an argument for whose pain is worse, but in commiseration. “I don’t regret any moment I spent with you, spent loving you. I’ll love you until I die, Phoebe. And I hate that I can’t do it the right way, as I should have been able to.” Because she’d taught him how to move on and love again, and it had only foreshadowed the beginning of the end for them.
I am water - soft enough to offer life
tough enough to drown it away
tough enough to drown it away
