She leaned into him. He put his arm around her and she rested her head against his shoulder. They sat like that while the rain kept falling and the tea went cold on the side table.
“I need to tell you something too,” she said.
“Okay.”
“When you were gone. The three days.” She pulled back enough to look at him. “I laid out the whole exhibition on my kitchen table. Every portrait. And there’s this gap in the sequence. Right in the middle, where your portrait would go. And every time I walked past the table, I felt it.”
He didn’t say anything. His arm stayed around her.
“It’s the right gap,” she said. “Those photos weren’t mine to show. I know that. But it’s not just the exhibition. It’s…” She pressed her lips together, searching. “You’re the missing piece in the story I’m trying to tell about this place. And I put you there without asking, and I lost the right to include you, and that’s a consequence I earned. But I want you to know that the gap isn’t nothing. It means something to me every time I see it.”
“I know,” he said.
“I will never show a photograph of you without your knowledge again. What I did to you was exactly what I did to Maria. I told myself it was different. But it wasn’t.”
“You already apologized for that.”
“I know. But I needed to say this part. The apology was about what I did. This is about who I want to be.” She sat up and faced him fully. “I want to be the photographer who earns the image. Every time. Even when the shot is extraordinary. Even when it’s the best work I’ve ever done. If the person didn’t say yes, the photo doesn’t exist. That’s the line, and I will never cross it again.”
Clint looked at her. The lamp beside the couch threw warm light across half his face, and the rain-light from the windows gave the other half a blue-gray wash. She wanted to photograph him so badly it ached. She would not.
“I believe you,” he said.
She reached for his hand. He gave it. His fingers closed around hers, rough and warm.
“There’s something else,” she said. “About Sam’s book.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ll need to travel. Some of the structures he wants to document are up the coast, a few in the Panhandle, one near Savannah. Short trips. A week, maybe two at a time.”
“You told me. Starlight Shores is home base.”
“It is. But I want to be honest about what that looks like. I’ll be gone sometimes. I’ll come back. And I need you to tell me if that’s something you can live with, because I’m not going to pretend it’ll be easy.”
He was quiet. She felt the hesitation and made herself wait through it.
“A few weeks ago, I would have told you to go,” he said. “Just go, do the work. I would have said it like I was being supportive, but really I would have been letting you leave before you could hurt me again. Or before I could let you close enough to matter.”
“I know. I heard it in your voice when I first told you about Sam’s offer. You said all the right words, but something underneath was wrong.”
He nodded. “I was trying to be noble. Trying to let you go because I thought that’s what the right call looked like. Like if I cared about you, I should step aside and not make it complicated.”
“That’s not noble. That’s hiding again.”
He laughed softly. “Fair point.”
“So what’s the answer? The real one.”
He pulled her hand into his lap and held it with both of his. “The real answer is I want you to go do this work because it matters. And I want you to come back because I’ll be here. And I’m done pretending those two things can’t both be true.”
She blinked and felt her eyes sting and didn’t try to hide it.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. A small gesture, old-fashioned, and completely Clint.
They sat in the quiet for a while. The rain had thinned to a whisper. Through the window, the lighthouse beam made its slow rotation, and each pass threw a stripe of light across the far wall of the living room.
