Gene is, well, gobsmacked. He'd known all of this, really, but it's one thing to know it and another thing entirely to hear it after something this traumatic has happened to both of them.

"How could you possibly forgive me? What have I done to deserve forgiveness? We were both in the head of the person I was at seventeen, and...I don't like him very much.

"And I needed to see the crash. I don't think I understood it before, not completely."