She sighed, folding her hands, looking uncertain. "August, I.. I still care deeply about you. I still love you, August, and I'm worried."
"You left," he said severely. "I don't even know that you loved me before you left, but you left, so you didn't love me then. Now a year has passed, so even if you loved me before you left, you certainly don't love me now."
"It's been a year, Aspen. A year without you. I have spent that year trying to figure out what love is, trying to understand how I could have been better to make you stay with me, but ultimately, if you had wanted to stay, you would have. You didn't want to stay because you didn't love me. That's all there is to it."
"That's not why I left!" she said, audibly upset. "I left because I felt I had screwed you up but showing you how I felt and that I made everything worse.." she shuddered. "It would have been better for you had I never showed up in the first place.."
