Home Entertainment Game Technology Six months after a bullet left me paralyzed, my fiancée secretly ordered the staff to stop my afternoon therapy because she believed helping me was pointless, but the exhausted aide earning twenty-five dollars an hour refused to treat me like a lost cause. I had spent my life surrounded by men terrified of my name, yet it took one brutally honest woman washing my back to make me realize the person wearing my engagement ring had already abandoned me.352

I looked at Mara.

Then Tessa.

“I don't know what I'm supposed to say.”

Mara gave me the faintest, saddest smile.

“Maybe that's good.”

Tessa wiped her cheeks.

I reached for the crutches beside my chair.

She instinctively stepped forward.

Then stopped herself.

For months, she had helped me rise.

This time, she waited.

I planted the crutches.

Locked my braces.

Pushed.

My arms trembled.

My left hip engaged.

My right leg resisted.

Slowly, painfully, I stood.

Not straight.

Not gracefully.

But upright.

Tessa's face crumpled.

Mara watched in silence.

I took one step toward her.

Then another.

The distance between our chairs was less than six feet.

It felt longer than every harbor I had ever owned.

When I reached Mara, I didn't offer my hand.

I didn't ask forgiveness.

I simply stood there until my legs began to shake.

Mara looked up at me.

“You can sit.”

“Not yet.”