Chapter 22 #2
We finished eating with the ease of people who had been doing it their whole lives.
She stole a bite of mine before I’d finished, completely unabashed, and I slid my plate toward her without comment because some things didn’t need explaining.
We washed up together in the narrow kitchen, her washing and me drying, the space small enough that our arms kept brushing at the sink.
Every point of contact was small. Every single one registered.
When she set up the laptop at the table—the mic, the voice disguiser, and I pulled my chair around to her side. Not behind her, beside her, close enough that she could feel me there and reach out if she needed me.
She hit the button.
“Welcome back to Somebody Said in Sweetbriar.” Her voice came out steadier than I expected. “I’ve been quiet for a while. I had my reasons. But here’s the thing about going quiet—eventually the silence gets louder than anything you were trying to avoid saying.”
I watched her find her rhythm. Watched her tuck her legs beneath her, and she relaxed, as the words started coming easier.
She talked about the town and the raccoons and knit night and the comfort of living in a place where everyone knew your name.
She talked about going quiet and coming back. About postponing the inevitable.
And then her voice changed. Just slightly. The careful lightness falling away into something more deliberate.
“There’s something I’ve been avoiding saying out loud,” she said slowly, “because saying it out loud makes it real. And it’s scary how real things, things that matter the most, can go wrong.”
She’d set her hands flat on the table. Still. Steady. Like she was bracing herself.
I went very still.
“There is someone I’ve been circling for years without admitting that’s what I was doing,” she said. “Someone who already knew things about me I hadn’t told him. Someone who showed up—keeps showing up—without making it feel like an obligation.”
She wasn’t looking at me. She didn’t need to. Everything went quiet as she paused.
She stared at the laptop, fingers resting on the edge of it, not quite ready to look at me yet. Her cheeks were flushed. Her breath was slow and deliberate, the way it got when she was managing something carefully.
She was so beautiful that it was hard to think in a straight line.
Not just her face—though, damn, she was beautiful—but all of it.
Her courage. The stubborn, breathtaking courage of a woman who was terrified of needing people and kept choosing to reach for them anyway.
She had gone live knowing someone might be listening who didn’t want her to. And she was sharing herself anyway.
She undid me. She had always undone me.
She wasn’t looking at anything in particular—not the mic, not the dark window, not even the empty space across the table. Her eyes stayed fixed on her own hands, fingers laced loosely now, knuckles pale from how tightly she’d been holding herself together.
Then she drew in a slow breath, the kind that signals the real ending was coming.
“He’s listening right now,” she said, and her voice dipped lower, almost conspiratorial, the certainty in it steady and unshakable.
“He’s hearing every word. And it makes this both scarier and easier all at once.
” She unfolded her hands, pressed them flat to the table again, like she was grounding herself one last time.
“But here’s what I do know,” she continued, and something in her tone shifted—less confession, more quiet certainty.
“I know what it feels like to carry something big in silence for so long that it starts to feel like part of your skeleton. I know how easy it is to tell yourself waiting is safer than risking the fall. I know how convincing the lie gets. If I never name it, it can’t break me. ”
A small, rueful smile touched her mouth.
“So if you’re out there listening tonight—and I don’t just mean him, I mean any of you who’ve been holding your own version of this story—listen to this part.”
She leaned a fraction closer to the mic, voice steady now, the tremor gone.
“Don’t wait for the fear to leave before you speak. It won’t. Fear doesn’t pack up and move out just because you’ve rehearsed the words enough times. It sits right there beside the courage, shoulder to shoulder, until you decide the thing you want is bigger than the thing you’re afraid of losing.”
She paused, let the words settle.
“Say it messy. Say it too soon or too late or in the wrong tone of voice. Say it even if your hands shake and your pulse is loud enough to drown out the room. Say it because the alternative—another month, another year, another lifetime of almost—is heavier than any rejection could ever be.”
Her gaze finally lifted—not to me, not yet, but to some middle distance, like she was speaking to the whole dark stretch of Sweetbriar and everyone still awake in it.
“And if you’re honest and the person on the other end hears you and steps toward you instead of away—don’t be surprised if it feels ordinary at first. Not fireworks. Not a movie score crescendo. Just two people who’ve been circling, finally closing the circle. Quiet is okay as long as it’s real.”
She exhaled, long and slow, the sound almost a laugh at herself.
“So that’s my advice tonight, Sweetbriar. Not just for me. For you too.”
She reached for the laptop, fingers steady now.
“Be the one who stops waiting for permission to be brave. Be the one who says the thing, even when the silence feels safer. Because on the other side of the scary part—there might just be someone who’s been waiting to hear it.”
She paused for a beat.
“Goodnight,” she said, softer than before, the words carrying a private weight only two people in the room would fully understand. “And goodnight to the rest of you. Keep showing up. Even when it’s hard.”
Her finger hovered.
Then she pressed stop.
The red light went dark.
She didn’t move right away. Just sat there, breathing, cheeks still flushed, the smallest smile lingering like she’d surprised even herself.
Only then did she turn her head and look at me, where I’d been sitting beside her the whole time.
Her eyes were bright. Relieved. A little dazed. “Hey,” she whispered.
I reached over, covered her hand with mine. “Hey,” I said back.
And for once, neither of us needed any more words.
I saw it—all of it. The hope she’d been trying to manage. The fear underneath it. The bravery of someone who had just said something true in front of witnesses and was waiting to find out what it cost her.
“You were talking about me,” I said. My voice cracked on the last word, just barely.
“Yes.”
I set my glass down and leaned forward, closing some of the distance between us without closing all of it. Giving her room to decide. “You’re not scared anymore,” I said. Not a question.
She considered it. “I’m still scared,” she said. “I just decided I want you anyway.”
Something inside my chest turned over completely.
I reached for her hand across the table. She let me take it.
“Becca.” My voice stayed soft, steady, even though my heart was anything but calm.
“I’ve seen all of you, Becca, for years.
Every time your laugh came too quick to hide something aching.
Every time you said ‘I’m fine’ when the word felt heavy in your mouth.
Every time you stood so tall and alone, carrying everything like it was nothing, when I could see how much it weighed.
Since we were little kids, I’ve seen you. ”
I held her eyes, gentle but unflinching. “I’m not searching for the places you keep hidden. I already know them. I’ve known them the whole time. And I’m still right here, because I want to be. Because it’s you.”
Her breath hitched. She looked down for a second, lashes wet, then back up at me with eyes that were suddenly brighter, softer. “That…” she whispered, voice trembling just enough to crack the quiet. “That’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
I gave the smallest smile, the kind that only comes out for her. “It’s just the truth.”
She stood slowly, one hand reaching out like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to touch me yet, her fingers hovering near my sleeve as if testing whether this kind of safety was real.
I did too, not because I had decided to, but because she moved, and the part of me that had been following her since we were kids apparently hadn’t stopped.
We were close. The lamp threw warm light across her cheekbones, caught in the loose strands of hair around her face. I could see the faint flutter of her pulse at her throat. I could feel the warmth of her from inches away.
I lifted my hand slowly and tucked that loose strand of hair back from her face. My fingers grazed her cheek—just barely, just the lightest contact—and I felt her breath catch at it. Such a small thing. Such an enormous thing.
I let my fingers linger there, tracing the line of her cheekbone with my thumb, slow and deliberate, like I had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it. Her eyes went soft at the edges. Her lips parted slightly.
I wanted to memorize this. This exact moment, before anything changed—her looking at me like she was finally done pretending she didn’t want this, the warm light catching in her eyes, the river moving quiet and steady beyond the trees.
“I’m not afraid of the parts of you that you think are too much,” I said quietly, my voice barely above a breath. “I’m just so glad you’re finally letting me in.”
She stopped trying to find words.
The space between us vanished. She closed the distance and kissed me like she’d been waiting years to finally believe it was safe to fall.