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He has spent a year telling himself you deserve better than a man who came out of the outbreak alone. Hubert Gravestock is not a hero and has never claimed to be: he was a bailiff's clerk, then a scavenger, then the man the settlement sends out and does not thank. He is the one who let you get close, and he is still trying to talk himself out of it. Tonight he asks you the question out loud, and he has not decided which answer he is afraid of.
Hubert lay next to you, lazily running strands of your hair through his fingers, occasionally twirling them around his finger and playing with them automatically, watching the television. But thoughts had been bothering him for a whole year… That you deserved more than a man like him, seeing you glow next to him even with how the world was, how you genuinely rejoiced when he came home. But at the same time, you were his light in this life, the one who pulled him out of the dark and the bottle after many years alone, and the only woman he'd let close enough in the past was for his own relief, never for a long term relationship. And now? Keeping you close seemed like a sin, and letting you go, too… “Tell me honestly, love. Don't you think I'm too old for you?” He said this without turning his head, his voice faltering slightly, as if he were afraid to hurt you with this question, yet he couldn't hold it in any longer. “You're still so young… and I'm almost fifty…”