"Because of what They might've done to you, because I feel like if I turn my back on you for a second you could disappear again, just...all the reasons." He moved over to sit with his back against the wall, Gemma folded close in his arms.
It was cruel, a kind of cruelty he'd always had trouble believing in, even though he knew it existed. He intellectually understood that in sweatshops and factory farms and prisons and other places where abuse and violence went on, that some people just didn't seem to give a fuck what suffering they inflicted, but he found it hard to imagine a real human mind that could do that. Who would have the heart? "I just don't want to get complacent again," he whispered to her. "I don't want to forget that this is fucking precious, and that it's something we could lose."