Alexi is multi-layered and complex, and I don’t know what’s real anymore.

I keep waiting for the punishments, the cruelty and the blows to my heart with the cruel words of how little I matter to him, and yet they don’t come. Not this time. It’s almost like he is afraid he may push me to that point again where I held a gun to my head and willed my life to be over. He seems cautious around me as though that night left a mark on him too.

It’s in the small things. The way ...