Lia watched him sitting there, struggling, and she slid out of her side of the booth, her eyes trained to his pained face, as she came over to his side of the booth, the two of them shadowed by the tall back of the bench. "Yes," she said softly.
She put both hands on the side of his face, holding it steady. "George. Living your life for yourself first--not for him, not for the both of you--will feel like little deaths every day, and it's so much easier to run back to what you know than go this new way, but you can't if you really want to move on. You don't deserve to fall down the rabbit hole every day. You deserve," she said, as firmly as she could with her voice low and quiet, her thumbs brushing lightly over his cheekbones and the pressure points there, "your life."