"I'd decided to stay, Astrid. I decided before you opened your mouth at this lake. I hadn't said it out loud to a single person, including myself. But I'd decided."
I didn't move.
"When you told me to take the slot, I had a choice. I could override you the way Brett overrode you for six years, or I could let you make the call with half the story in front of you. I let you make the call with half the story. I thought respecting you meant not pushing back. I drove down on that. I packed the boxes I hadn't packed in eighteen months, and I drove down on that, and I told myself the whole way that I was honoring you."
He scrubbed a hand down his face.
"Shane sat me down at the island this morning and told me that wasn't honoring you. Telling you the truth was honoring you. I'd skipped the part where I told you the truth, and I'd called what I'd done respect."
His eyes didn't leave my face.
"I don't want the slot. I never wanted it the way I told myself I wanted it. I wanted to be the man who wanted it, because that man had somewhere to go after his grandmother died, and I didn't. I was holding on to the idea of him because the idea of him was the only place I had to put myself."
He stopped.
I hadn't said anything for the whole of it.
"I'm asking you to choose again, Astrid. With the whole story this time. Not the version I handed you on this bank."
The woods were quiet.
Moose was sitting at his hip with the patient look of a dog who had decided the humans were having a moment he was going to wait out.
I let it land.
I'd been turning the lake over in my head for three weeks. Turning over the version of myself who handed him three doorson a bank and told him to walk through the one with the slot behind it. Telling myself I did it for him. Telling myself that not being ready was the truth.
I'd been lying to myself for three weeks about which door had been the lie.
He told me. On the bank.One of 'em is the truth. The other one is the door you brought to close it with.
He knew.
He let me close it anyway.
I drew a breath.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"I wasn't protecting you."
I let it sit.
"I was protecting myself."
His face did something I didn't have a word for.
"I told you I wasn't ready because being ready would mean I could lose you. I'd lost everything once, and I wasn't going to set myself up to lose it again. I used Brett because Brett was the door I knew would lock. I knew it when I said it. I've known it every morning since."
I let my hand come off Moose's back and onto Easton's knee in the dirt.
"The truest thing I said all week was the lie."
He closed his eyes for a count.
He opened them.
