He looked back at me. “You know what she taught me that I couldn’t teach myself?”
I waited.
“That the person you love can handle more than you think.” He glanced at his glass. “You keep trying to carry it alone so it doesn’t touch her. But she wasn’t asking you to carry it alone. She was asking you to let her in.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to — he’d said the thing I’d been circling for months and hadn’t been able to name.
“That’s not protecting,” Dutch said. “That’s you, running your Road Captain logic on your own life. Assess, decide, execute, handle it clean.” He set his glass down. “She’s not a route, Holden.”
He finished his whiskey and stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bride to dance with.”
I watched him cross the room to Indira, sweep her into his arms, spin her onto the dance floor. They moved together like they’d been doing it for years — and maybe they had, in their own way.
Near the edge of the dance floor, I could see Bea laughing at something Lilac said. For a moment, her face was unguarded — open and warm and beautiful. The particular warmth she had when she forgot to be careful — when she was just herself, and not the version of herself that was protecting something.
Then she glanced in my direction.
Our eyes met. Held.
Not long. Three seconds, maybe four. But she didn’t look away and neither did I. I made myself stay still. Made myself not move toward her, not signal anything, not use the moment.
Just let it be what it was. Whatever that meant, from a man who’d done nothing for three months and called it space.
Then she turned back to Lilac, and I looked down at my drink.
Chapter 24
?
— Bea —
The text had come three weeks before the wedding.
I know things are complicated. I’m not going to pretend they’re not. But you’re my friend and I want you there. If it’s too much, tell me — I’ll understand. No hard feelings, no weirdness.
I’d sat with it for two days. Read it four times. Typed and deleted three different answers.
The thing about Indira was that she meant it. Not the polite version of meaning it, where the invitation came with an expectation baked in. She actually meant it — she would have understood, would not have held it against me, would have let it go cleanly if I’d decided to skip the wedding. That was the part that made it impossible to say no.
I’ll be there,I’d written back.Thank you for asking.
She’d sent a single heart. No follow-up. No fuss. That was Indira.
And now here I was, three weeks later, having sat through a ceremony that was genuinely, painfully beautiful — having hugged Indira and told her so, having held Knox’s hand when he’d squeezed mine during the vows, unprompted, which had undone me completely — and the reception had been going for hours and I was doing fine.
That was the story I was telling myself, anyway, from a corner near the edge of the room where I’d found the distance I needed — close enough to be present, far enough to be alone.
And somewhere in this room, behind the white flowers and the rows of brothers in their best clothes, Holden was doing all of it too.
I’d looked at him exactly three times — across the room, in the way you look at something when you’ve given yourself permission to look as long as you look once and then stop. He was in a dark button-down. He looked like himself, which I’d been half-hoping he wouldn’t. The third time I looked he was already looking at me, and we held it for a moment too long, and then both looked away.
That’s when she found me. A small woman, gray hair pulled back neat. I’d noticed her during the ceremony — sitting apart from the man I knew was Dutch’s father, hands folded, crying quietly while she watched Dutch say his vows. I’d filed her away and moved on.
Now she materialized near my corner.
“You’re the therapist,” she said. Not a question.
“I am.”
