The words crack through me.Because she's right.She's always right.She reads me the way she reads her dogs, and right now she's reading the lip-licking and the pacing and the rigid posture and translating it into the truth I won't speak.
"I'm feeling like I've done this before."The words come out harder than I intend.Rougher."I've stood on the shore and watched people I care about go into the water, and I've learned that the math never works.You save who you can save and you lose who you lose, and the losing is the part that never stops."
"I'm not going into the water.I'm going to a deposition."
"You're going back to a world where I can't reach you.Where I can't do anything except stand here and wait to find out how much it costs you."I step toward her.Close the distance that I've been trying to maintain all afternoon."I watched a father and his fifteen-year-old son drown because I couldn't get to them in time.I held a woman and her daughter in one arm and watched two people die thirty feet away from me.And I have spent four years building a life where I never have to stand on that edge again, and you..."
My voice breaks.Actually breaks.In the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a dog kennel, in front of the woman I love.
"You put me right back there," I say."Because losing you would be worse."
Her face crumbles.The sharp edges dissolve into something so tender and hurt that my chest caves in.
"Then come with me," she says.
"To New Hampshire?"
"To New Hampshire.To the deposition.To wherever I need to go."She takes my hands.Pulls them away from where they've been clenched at my sides.Presses them between both of hers."You don't have to stand on the shore and watch me go.You can be in the water with me."
The water.
She doesn't know what she's saying.Or maybe she does.Maybe she chose that exact metaphor because she knows it's the one that will reach me, because Lydia Brooke always knows exactly what language will get through.
"I can't," I say.And it's the truest, most broken thing I've ever admitted."I don't know how to stand next to someone and not be the one saving them.I don't know how to watch you go through something terrible and just be there without fixing it.That's not how I'm built."
"It's exactly how you're built.It's what you do with the dogs every single day."Tears are running down her face now.Silent, steady tears that she doesn't wipe away."You stand next to them.You create the space.You let them work through it.That's your whole method now.The one I taught you.The one you just used to transform Koda."
"You're not a dog, Lydia."
"No.I'm the woman who loves you.And I'm telling you that what I need is not a rescue swimmer.It's a partner."
The word loves detonates in my chest.I hear it.I feel every letter of it.And the part of me that has been running toward this woman since the day she arrived slams directly into the part of me that has been running from everything else.
"I need time," I say.
The silence between those words and her response lasts forever.
"Okay."She lets go of my hands.Steps back.The distance between us opens like a wound."Take your time.I'll be at the inn tonight.I need to pack and make calls and figure out flights."
"Lydia."
"Don't."She holds up one hand.Her chin is trembling but her voice is steady."Don't tell me you care about me while you're standing ten feet away with your arms crossed.I grew up in a house where people said all the right words and did all the wrong things.I can't do that again."
She walks out of the kennel.Whistles for Scout.The Malinois falls into heel without looking back.
I watch her cross the gravel to her car.I watch her open the door, load Scout, climb in.I watch her start the engine and pull down the drive and disappear around the bend.
I stand in the kennel with a cleaning brush in a bucket and a heart that's ripping itself apart.
Duke appears at the gate of his run.Lies down.Puts his chin on his paws and looks at me with those old, wise eyes that have watched me do everything wrong for four years.
"Don't start," I tell him.
He exhales through his nose.
My phone buzzes.
Logan Creed:
