“I know that.” I tried to articulat

“I know that.” I tried to articulate my chaotic thoughts. “But I need to take care of her. After what she’s lived through …”
My eyes squeezed shut. Knowing what she’d suffered was almost too much for me to think about sometimes. “I have to be strong for her. Make the tough calls.”
“Gideon, you’re one of the strongest men I know,” he said quietly.
I opened my eyes and looked at him. “You haven’t seen me the way she has.”
Crying like a child. Brutalized by memories. Masturbating while unconscious. Violent in my sleep. Weak, so weak. Helpless.
“Do you think she doubts you because you’ve let her see you vulnerable? That doesn’t sound like Eva to me.”
My eyes stung. “You don’t know everything. You just … You don’t know.”
“But Eva does. And she married you anyway. She loves you—very much—anyway.” He offered a kind smile that somehow slashed like a blade, cutting me open. “You asked me once if relationships were about compromise. Do you remember that?”
I jerked a nod.
“That compromise means you don’t always have to be the strong one, Gideon. You can do the heavy lifting on occasion, and you can let Eva do it sometimes. Marriage isn’t about whether you’re strong enough as an individual. It’s about how strong you are together and the luxury of taking turns carrying the load.”
“I …” My head bowed again. Eva had said the same thing. “I’m trying. I swear to God, I’m trying.”
“I know you are.”
“She has to take me back. She has to come back. I need her. She’s killing me right now. She’s ripping me apart.” I stared at my hands, at the rings she’d given me that made me hers. “What do I do? Tell me what to do.”
“Eva is going to want to know that you’re willing to change. She’ll want to see you taking steps to demonstrate that. You won’t face these big decisions too often, so she may adopt a wait-and-see attitude. That will be hard for you, I think. Very hard.”
I nodded slowly, but I couldn’t wait anymore. If Eva needed proof that I’d do anything to keep her, I would give it to her.
My hands clenched into fists. My gaze stayed on the carpet between my feet. “I was—” I cleared my throat. “The therapist. The one I had when I was a child.”
“Yes?”
"He... he molested me. For nearly a year. He... raped me.