Chapter 35
"Turn around."
"I can't."
He heard her step closer. Her breathing was easy now. Controlled. So was her voice. The shaking was gone. The anger was gone. What was left sounded like the woman he'd fallen in love with on a beach in October.
"Baby, turn around."
He closed his eyes. Hard. The way he did when he was a little boy and it stormed outside and the thunder shook the house and he was too embarrassed to tell his parents he was scared.
He was always too embarrassed to say when he was scared.
He'd pull the covers over his head and hold his breath and wait for the sound to stop and when it did he'd pretend it had never happened.
His heart was loud in his chest. He kept his eyes closed.
The water was turning in the dark and the moon was behind him and she was three feet away asking him to do the one thing that would end the fight.
Not because turning around meant she won.
Because turning around meant the anger was over and he wasn't sure he was ready to let it go.
The anger had kept him upright for a month.
Without it he was just a man standing in a yard missing a woman he loved.
He opened his eyes. He turned.
The moon was on her face. Her eyes were swollen and her cheeks were wet and her hair was pulled back and she was wearing a sweatshirt he didn't recognize and jeans and she'd come here in whatever she'd been wearing when his texts arrived.
No black dress. No heels. No act. Just Kirstin Green at eleven o'clock at night standing in his yard because he'd told her to say it to his face and she'd gotten in the car.
She hadn't put on makeup. She hadn't checked her hair. She'd read his texts and driven here and the woman standing in front of him was the woman in the painting. The one who didn't know anyone was watching.
The only thought he had was how much he'd missed her.
She closed the distance and fell into his chest.
"I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry."
He let his arms come around her. Not all at once.
One and then the other. He let them hold her and he let his lips find her hair and he kissed her gently and the month between them was still there but it was smaller now, compressed into the space between his chest and her face, getting smaller with every breath.
They stood like that for a long time. The grass. The moon. The cold. Her hands gripping the back of his shirt. His chin on her head. The tide turning in the dark.
She said it into his shirt. Quiet. Almost a whisper.
"I walked into that bar to hurt you. I put on the dress and did my hair and walked in like I was fine because I wanted you to see me and I wanted it to hurt.
" She pressed deeper into his chest. "And a man I've never met is sitting somewhere icing his jaw because I created a scene he walked into. That's on me. All of it."
He held her. He thought about what to say. Most of what he thought of was too much or too little. Then the simplest version arrived.
"All you had to do was pick up the phone."
She pressed harder into him. He felt her nod against his chest. She knew.
She'd always known. The phone had been right there for a month and she could have called and he would have answered and none of it had to happen.
The punch. The fracture. The banner coming down.
The month of silence. All of it erasable with a phone call she never made.
They stood there. The water. The moon. The cold air pressing in. His arms around her. Her face in his shirt. Inside the house, Hudson's nose was against the screen door, watching, his tail going slow.
"Are we okay?" she said.
He didn't answer right away. He couldn't. The truth took time because the truth was complicated. The night had been long. The anger was still in him alongside the love and both of them were real and both of them were going to be there for a while.
"We will be," he said.