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The answer isn’t complicated. You just aren’t ready to believe it yet. That’s okay. I can be patient. I’ve had years of practice.

I noticed you before you ever noticed me. First week of school. New kid. Ruined throat. Dead parents. Didn’t know where to sit. Didn’t know how to exist in a place where everyone else still had normal problems and voices and lives.

Then there was you, the girl assigned to give me a tour of the school.

You wore a purple sundress with little yellow butterflies all over it, and your hair was down in loose waves that looked soft enough to make a guy forget how to breathe. You smiled at me like it cost you nothing, but I need you to know it gave me something back.

You didn’t pity me. You didn’t talk just to fill my silence, didn’t ask questions that I couldn’t answer. You asked yes-or-no questions. You waited for me to nod or shake my head. You made room for me in the conversation like I still belonged in it.

I don’t know if you remember that.

At thirteen, when everything in me felt dead or ruined or lost, you were the first thing that made the world feel less impossible.

I never wanted that tour to end.

Then we got back to the main office, and I almost asked you to meet me at the park after school.

Almost.

But he came up first. The man who does not deserve to be named in this letter. He had been nice to me that week too, in the way everyone tried to be nice after the accident. Curious, mostly. Asking what I remembered, what I saw, and whether I wanted to talk about it.

When I didn’t, he turned mean faster than the others.

You smiled at him though when he slung his arm around you, and I thought that meant you were happy. So I kept my distance.

That does not mean I stopped noticing you. I never did.

You made people feel seen. You laughed with your whole face when you forgot to hide it or the second certain people looked away.

There was fire in you even when you tried to bury it.

You don’t see yourself the way you should. You see the scar. I see the woman who got up. You see hesitation. I see someone who survived years of being taught to doubt herself and still keeps choosing to fight. You see the places they made you feel weak. I see proof that they were wrong.

You are not broken, Clair. You are not too much work.

I know you don’t believe that yet. That’s okay.

I’m going to show you.

Leon

A shaky laugh slips out, tears stinging.

Of course he would make it sound like a threat.

I press the letter over my heart. The ink doesn’t crowd me. It doesn’t ask me to be ready before I am.

He remembered the dress.

A tear slips down my cheek, then another, and I don’t wipe them away. For once, they don’t feel like weakness. They feel like proof I still want to be touched.

Seen.

That’s what this is.

Leon didn’t just notice me. He saw me. Not the version Russ wanted. Not the version my parents corrected and polished until she knew how to smile on command.

Me.