She had lost faith in him so gradually that at first he'd hardly even noticed. - Ali Shaw

The rain watered the world so heavily that he wondered if it might rinse it away. He did not think he would mind if it did.

"There's no shame in giving up," said Adrien. "I give up on all sorts of things." He whipped out his hip flask and offered it to her. She drank more than he felt he had been offering.

Self-loathing was a difficult thing for those who had none of their own to understand. It had its own seasons. It could trick you into thinking it had lifted, only to come cycling around again. You attacked yourself in the same ways you always had. You flung the same accusations. Perhaps you could no more rid yourself of self-loathing than you could rid the world of winter. What was certain was that, like winter, in its wake it left you bare.