QUOTE : All anyone wants is someone to walk with them,” Sam said quietly. Rachel. So strong, and so alone. And he’d been teaching her to walk alone. He wanted to watch her do everything. Come apart under him, discover who she was now, who she’d be in a month, a year, a decade. He wanted to watch her live. Rachel was the kind of woman who’d be different every time he came home after a shift, and there was another thought he couldn’t shake—Rachel in his apartment when he came home, or maybe in a house they bought together. He’d tried to force her to disconnect, to treat life like he did, as a dip in the shallow end of pleasure. Meaningless. Empty. He’d done what he did with every other woman, made it hot and fast and rough, and she’d called him on it. His apartment was empty, missing even the promise of Rachel. His life was empty of that as well, and of Sam, even though Sam had been back for a decade. That’s what was inside him. Emptiness.