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~Eva’s POV
I wiped my face furiously, anger and grief twisting together inside me. “So now I am the villain,” I said bitterly. “Now I am the reason she vanished, and she becomes the saint you must protect.”
“You are not a villain,” he replied softly. “But you made choices, and those choices hurt someone who had already been hurt enough.”
The words echoed in my head, loud and unbearable.
He kept talking, and his voice softened in a way that settled painfully in my chest, right where things already hurt too much.
“I was happy when Velma married Dylan,” he said, still not looking at me. His gaze stayed on the thin line of machines beside his bed, as if the truth was easier to say when it was not directed at my face. “For the first time, she had someone who chose her. Someone who stay
