“Gaspard eyed me cautiously. “I really can’t say,” he responded in his formal nineteenth-century style. Can’t, or won’t? I thought.”
“I can’t… I find that I can’t concentrate. On anything. I can’t really…” Rhage’s eyes drifted to Zsadist. “How do you live with it? All the anger. The pain. The…”
“I can’t leave now. I like her too much. There, I said it. But I won’t say it again.”
“For me, he can walk on water, dance in the clouds. I know he can’t, really, but what he can and can’t do pales into nothing when I look at him.”
“Let me go!” I snarl at him, trying to wrest my arm from his grasp. “I can’t,” he says.”
“I learned that “I can’t” usually means “I won’t,” and that “I won’t” usually means “I’m scared to.”