[ Jess's bare for crazy-sounding shit was pretty high. She could safely assume higher than most's. Even so, she bound herself not to dismiss anything he said. She could keenly recall how it had hurt her when Luke didn't believe her claim about Kilgrave, to the point that she hadn't dealt with it, all these months late and despite his apology. It was still painful to revisit so she kept it buried.

She didn't want to do that to Shadow. From what she'd learned of him, in person rather than in the documented accounts of others, he was earnest to a fault. Why would he lie to her in an attempt to drive her away? There were shorter roads to that same end, including leaving without need for a single word.

So Jess listened, sipping intermittently from her glass. She eased her leg up onto the mattress, sitting more comfortably as he went on. His fear of her disbelief was unfounded, sentence by sentence. So far, it wasn't particularly strange. Absentee fathers showed back up and screwed up their kids lives all the time. More than a few thought they could hire her to help them do it. ("Wednesday" threw her off a bit but she expected that to become clear soon.)]

I'm sorry. [ About his wife. And because those words meant nothing, changed nothing, she at least had to qualify them. ] I know what it's like to have people taken away by someone who thinks they can just... make themselves your world. [ Her gaze drifted away from him as she told him, to the unusually clean floor, and the last of her words skipped like stones across the surface of her whiskey. Jess drank slowly but deeply, waiting for him to continue. When her thirst was quenched, she returned to watching him. ]