Re: Rooftop.
"I don't know that you do," he said, cautiously, but she was already moving to another topic, and he fought to keep up. "I save who I can," he said, with that same placidity, that same calm, an iron unwillingness to give. There were things she just didn't need to know about. Tonight's strangeness aside, Brielle was vulnerable and under threat. The less she knew, the better. There was something knowing in that jab, though, and suddenly, he thought he'd grasped what it was.
He hadn't known alters could do this, press this hard on the people they were bound to. Jason sometimes tried to push him, but he rarely had much luck, and the same went for Jack from his direction. He'd never seen anything like it, and he finally caught the weird emerald gleam at the edges of dark eyes.
He didn't say it directly, because it was really still Brielle, sort of, in a way. His eyes marked the scar, one more piece of evidence that sketched out a bad history. Brielle was leaning in, then, and he looked back at her, studying her face. She didn't even know what she was doing, really. That wasn't fair to her. And looking at that soft face, those pretty eyes, just made him think of how he'd hurt Ivy, and the girl on the stair. No, it was better if he stayed away from women in that way, especially women like Brielle, women who needed help, not his problems and inability to find it in him to care. Brielle needed somebody who could take care of her and care for her. He couldn't be that man, any more than he could be the man who had no scar. "You can ask," he said, and didn't move any closer. "But you look a little...green."