This is Jacob's version of August's apology to Marlena. The apology is full of hyperbolic statements of how much August loves Marlena, full of over-the-top praise, base "remorse," and intense pleading. Yet it all kind of rings hollow. Jacob, Marlena, and everyone listening know how August has treated her. If he really did love her that much, how could he have been so cruel? It's hard to trust anything he says to her.

It took the appearance of real love for Marlena to realize that there was no love in her life. She didn't know how bad things were until Jacob showed up and helped her understand what real love could be. The discovery of something so good made her understand that she could no longer cope with a situation as bad as her current one with August.

As soon as he's started falling for Marlena, Jacob is focused on combining sex with emotional connection. Here he manages to achieve that. The "afterward" means they just had sex, and yet as close as they were during their intimate physical time, here they seem even closer. It's interesting that Jacob wants Marlena to be inside <em>him</em>: "I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and […] [have] her encased in my skin."

Jacob takes an even stronger stand against domestic violence here, insisting that there's no defending August's abuse. He won't listen to any pitiful excuses Al might try to offer on August's behalf.

Marrying August was supposed to free Marlena from her family, but instead it simply replaced one prison with another. Know the saying "out of the frying pan into the fire"? Marlena got out of one bad situation by getting into a worse one. When she wants to escape the new situation, it's too late to go back. She's truly trapped.

In some cases, confinement can be a good thing. Here Jacob's "helpless[ness]" results in physical pleasure. Once again, his moral code or ethical makeup tells him to do one thing and, against his better judgment, he resists.

In this moment of unhappiness, the characters don't need words to express their pain. Rosie says it all through her body: "her face" has "a look of unspeakable sadness" and "[h]er […] eyes are filled with tears." She sounds as though she could be entirely human here.

Here, August comes to apologize rather insincerely to Jacob. He approaches, smoking, calls Jacob "[his] boy" (which is rather patronizing), and doesn't even fully apologize. Instead he says he wants "bygones [to] be bygones," rather than taking full responsibility for his actions. Perhaps to underscore August's insincerity, Gruen writes that, as he's speaking, he's "blowing smoke," which could suggest that he's saying a whole lot of nothing. Is this just how guys apologize? What gives?