"I did at first," he admitted. It was surprisingly easy to talk to Ava about this stuff, everything that went on in his head he'd always internalized as being taboo to talk about with anyone but his therapist, stuff that would completely revile them and drive them far away from Dex if they truly knew how messed up he was internally. "But now I don't want to as much." He couldn't lie and say those thoughts ever truly went away no matter how much he actually cared for a person. They never had even with his mom, given how Dex had still wanted to kill her at the end to punish her for leaving him.

"Yeah. The day she told me the cancer was terminal I think I must have cried for a full hour..." He said, lapsing into silence for a moment. "It wasn't really ethical but I know she ended up loving me as much as I loved her by the end." Maybe even more just given the makeup of Dex's emotions only let him love to a certain extent. He was certain Eileen hadn't meant for that to happen but given she'd watched Dex grow up under her care and go from a potential serial killer in the making to a young man who would be able to actually function without her around meant she'd seen both his lowest and highest points, especially ones where he was vulnerable with her and no one else. It would have been hard to remain impartial after all that.

Then Ava changed the subject and Dex's painful thoughts turned from the woman who had been more of a mother to him than his own birth mother had been, given the length of time she'd been around in his life. "No. Though maybe I should take it up again."