It Was on the Way to You #3
She pushed herself up on one elbow and looked at me. And the expression on her face stopped something in me cold and then restarted it differently. Not pity. Not distress. Not the civilian horror that forced me into reassuring the other person instead of sitting inside my own pain.
Steadiness. And beneath it, something fierce. The same thing that had stepped in front of me in a crowded grocery store and told a stranger precisely what I was worth without flinching.
"You survived," she said. Her voice was tight, but her eyes were clear.
"I know that probably feels like the worst part.
I know survivor's guilt isn't something you argue someone out of, and I'm not going to try.
" Her hand pressed harder against the initials.
"But I need you to hear this. You have spent every single day since then running toward the fire instead of away from it.
You've built a crew that would follow you anywhere because you've earned every inch of their trust. Stevens is alive because of a call you made.
Those six families from the Salvador Ridge fire, the ones whose homes are still standing?
They're in them right now because of you.
They'll wake up tomorrow in their beds, in their lives, and they will never know your name, and that doesn't matter, because you know theirs. "
A sound came out of me. Somewhere between a laugh and something that wasn't.
"That's not freezing," she said. "That's someone who decided their life was going to mean something. That's Lucas and Santiago's friend making good on something every single time she shows up." Her thumb moved against their initials. "That's you, Petra. That has always been you."
I was going to need a moment. I took it. She gave it, without prompting, without filling the silence, because Vera understood that some things needed space to settle. To become real.
"I've never told anyone the full story," I said, when I could. "Not the VA therapist. Not Rodriguez. Not Jackson, and Jackson knows most things." I looked at her. "But you make me feel like carrying this doesn't mean it has to keep breaking me."
She leaned down and pressed her lips to the tattoo. To Lucas and Santi's initials, their coordinates, the dog tags rendered in ink that had lived against my ribs for eight years, seen by almost no one and explained to no one until now.
"Thank you for telling me," she said against my skin. "Thank you for trusting me with them."
I pulled her up and kissed her. We were both crying a little, which I wouldn't deny if asked, and which was also the most honest I'd been in years.
When we finally broke apart, she looked at me in the low candlelight, her hair damp and wild, her eyes bright with tears and something else, something that had been building for months in the space between us—and the words that had been living in my throat finally ran out of room.
I thought about the hallway, where she'd walked into my life and commanded my attention and never let go of it.
I thought about the diner, and the parking lot, and the library bookshelf, and the key in the dark, and the soup with the candle lit between our bowls, and the note in my gear bag with the crossed-out letters, and three hundred small specific moments between then and now.
I thought about the way she saw me, like I was allowed to be broken if I only remembered that brokenness wasn't a forever thing. We were.
"I love you," I said.
It came out almost helpless, like I'd held it so long it had its own momentum by the time it finally left, and all I could do was let it go.
Vera went completely still.
The total stillness of a person who had just heard something that rearranged everything.
"What?" she said.
"I love you." Stronger this time. Sure. The way I said things when I was certain, the way I said pull back and abort insertion and I've got you.
"I know it's fast. I know it's only been a few months.
But Vera, I have loved you since you called me Preppy in a hallway and sang Etta James to a complete stranger and acted like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I have been carrying it since you tucked a note in my gear bag and almost wrote it and crossed it out, and I have been walking around with your almost-word in my wallet like a secret I was keeping from myself.
" My voice cracked at the seam. "And I'm done being afraid of it.
I love you. I love you the way I love all things that truly matter.
Completely. Desperately. No plan at all, no bracing.
And I needed you to know that, baby. I need you to know how much I love you. "
Silence.
One second.
Two.
Too soon. I've—
Her eyes filled. Brimmed. Spilled over.