"Not always," she says back, because he might as well have blessed her heart. She doesn't hold it against him, not hardly, but while he might think this is the sort of thought that you'd embroider on a pillow or hang in a frame, for her? This concept is life and death. Had been. Probably will be for the rest of her life.

"It's hard to escape a narrative, especially when it seems like everything lines up just right to send you where you don't want to go. It's one thing for the universe to just be unfair but a narrative implies there's a logic to it. A real double-edged sword."