Melissa tucked her feet under her and wrapped both hands around the mug. Clint sat at the other end with one arm along the back cushion and his bare feet on the floor. The space between them was maybe two feet. It felt like nothing. It felt like everything.
“So,” she said.
“So.”
The rain filled the silence. She watched the steam curl off her tea and tried to find the right words. There were things that needed saying, and she was terrified that saying them would break whatever fragile, perfect thing had just started between them.
“I need to tell you something,” Clint said. He was looking at the mug in his hands, turning it slowly. “These last three days. At Sean’s.”
“Yeah?”
“I had dinner with Sean’s family while I was there.” He paused. “It was the hardest thing I’ve done since I left the Guard.”
She waited.
“Everyone kept thanking me. Sean’s parents, his fiancée, a couple guys from our unit who came. They all wanted to shake my hand and tell me what I did was brave. His mother cried.” He set the mug on the side table and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I watched Sean look at his fiancée, Laura, like she was his whole world. And he was standing on a leg that works because a surgeon spent eleven hours putting it back together after I made a call that…”
He stopped. She could see the muscles in his jaw working.
“Clint.”
“I know.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “I know what Sean said. That he wouldn’t have met her without the PT. That the rescue wasn’t the worst thing that happened to him, it was the best thing in disguise. And I heard him. I believe he means it.”
“But?”
“But I also watched him stand in the kitchen with a cane propped against the counter. And I thought, that’s me. I did that. And then he looked over at me, raised his beer, and smiled, and I…”
His voice broke. She’d never heard him sound like that.
“He forgave me a long time ago. Three years ago, in the hospital, before the second surgery. He told me to stop apologizing. I didn’t listen. I came here instead and hid for three years and called it healing.”
She set her mug down and moved across the couch. Not all the way. Close enough that her knee touched his thigh. She put her hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, and felt the tension locked there.
“What changed?” she asked.
He was quiet for a long time. The rain had softened to a murmur against the windows.
“Sean pulled me aside. We were outside on his parents’ porch, and he was so happy. Grinning. He grabbed me by the shoulders and said, ‘Stop punishing yourself. You’re wasting the life you saved.’” Clint’s voice steadied. “He meant his life. He was telling me that by hiding, and refusing to forgive myself, I was making his survival mean less. Like I’d saved him and then thrown away the person who did it.”
She pressed her hand harder against his back.
“I flew home the next morning, and the whole flight I kept thinking about you.” He turned his head and looked at her. “About how you told me that night at the base of the lighthouse that you took something from Maria LaBelle you couldn’t give back. And how you came here, stopped photographing people, and called it penance. And how it wasn’t penance. It was just hiding. Same as me.”
“Same as you,” she said.
“I kept thinking about how brave you’ve been. These last few months. Picking up the camera again, letting people in, doing the portraits. Saying yes to Sam’s book. Every single one of those things scared you, and you did them anyway.” He straightened up and turned toward her on the couch. “And I thought, if she can do that after what she went through, then what am I doing?”
She couldn’t speak for a moment. She’d spent months measuring her own progress in increments so small she barely recognized them. Shooting a candid of Sally. Asking Winnie to sit for a portrait. Accepting Cassidy’s job. Each one had felt like walking on a tightrope, afraid to look down. She hadn’t thought anyone was watching closely enough to notice.
“You were watching,” she said.
“I told you. I’ve been paying attention.”
She laughed, and it came out thick, half-caught by the tightness in her chest. “I’m not brave. Half the time I’m still terrified I’m going to hurt someone.”
“I know. That’s why I trust you.”
He trusted her. After everything. After the photos and the broken promise. After she’d done the exact thing she’d sworn she’d never do again. He trusted her because she was afraid of doing it, not in spite of it.
