Chapter 60 The Architecture Of Feeling

• The silence after his mental excavation of those damning weeks was a different kind of quiet. It wasn't the absence of sound, but the presence of a fully realized, horrifying truth. Alexander felt scraped raw, every nerve ending exposed. The past was no longer a hazy nightmare; it was a meticulously documented crime scene, and he was the sole perpetrator.
• His feelings for Evelyn, which had been a turbulent, confusing storm of guilt, yearning, and awe, suddenly crystallized into something clearer, and infinitely more painful.
• It wasn't just love. To call it love felt too small, too romantic, too clean. What he felt was a vast, desolate landscape of emotion with love at its center, but surrounded by moats of shame, mountains of regret, and a chilling, constant awareness of his own unworthiness.