“You don’t want me, Summer,” he said firmly. “I’m quite old, used-up, and I don’t even know how to be with someone anymore.” “I don’t think that’s true,” Summer murmured. “Isn’t it?” Silence, before Summer said slowly, “Maybe I’m wrong. . .  I’m probably wrong. Or maybe you were a good enough teacher that I can figure some things out. But either way, I think you shut yourself away while you needed to…but your protective walls turned into a cage when you didn’t need them anymore, and now you can’t find your way out.” Shut yourself away while you needed to. The simple memory of just why he’d shut himself away cut deep, digging down to a tiny pain that lived at his heart. He’d made it tiny deliberately, so he could compact it down into a thing so small it could fit in the palm of his hand, all of that agony crushed down into nothing so that he could never touch too much of it at any one time, its surface area barely the size of a fingerprint. And then he’d tucked it away, burying it down where he couldn’t reach it. But those simple words threatened to…