"It feels like everyone else is trying to take the words out of my mouth before I am ready to say them."
---------------
"I am sorry for everything," Maximillian quickly apologized as soon as they stepped away from the back porch.
"It's fine."
Maximillian let out a sigh. He took Julian's hand and led him along the animal enclosures lining the farmhouse's backyard.
Hens clucked contentedly from a weathered wooden coop, their rhythmic cackle punctuated by the occasional, more sonorous crow of a rooster.
A nearby pond glistened with the shimmering rays of sunlight, reflecting the graceful forms of ducks and geese gliding across its surface.
