Chapter 24 #2
The story hung in the still cabin between us, heavy and suffocating.
The ghosts of Leo, Beth, and Caitlin were here now, their presence as real and tangible as the gentle rocking of Line Dancer in its slip.
I had opened the door to that locked room in my mind, and the pain that had flooded out was nearly as raw and sharp as it had been thirteen years ago.
“It was my fault, Iris. I knew the signs. I didn’t listen to what the ocean was telling me. And three people paid for my mistake with their lives. My punishment was to go on living.”
Silent tears traced paths down Iris’s cheeks. My first instinct was to look away, to shut down, to retreat from the naked empathy on her face. But I didn’t. I just watched her feel it with me.
“Oh, Austin,” she murmured, her voice thick.
She reached down, her hand covering my white-knuckled fist on the blanket.
“That’s terrible. I am so, so sorry. But you must realize it was an accident.
A horrible, tragic accident. You were all just kids.
Maybe you shouldn’t have gone out, but you didn’t twist anyone’s arm, did you? You didn’t force them to go.”
Her words were meant to be a comfort, an absolution I’d never allowed myself. But they bounced off the calloused walls of my guilt.
“Doesn’t matter.” I pulled my hand out from under hers, the loss of her touch like a sudden chill. “It doesn’t matter if they wanted to go. I was the one who knew better. I should have shut the whole damn thing down before it ever started.”
“No.” Her voice was gentle yet firm. She refused to let me retreat into that cold, lonely place.
“It was a tragedy, Austin. A terrible, senseless tragedy. But it’s not something you should punish yourself over for the rest of your life.
You survived. That’s not a punishment. It’s just what happened. ”
I whipped my head back and forth, pulling away from the gentle logic of her words. “No. You don’t get it. It’s not just about punishment. It’s about the… the wrongness of it. I was the one who was supposed to know better. Yet I was the only one who walked away.”
I met her gaze and let her see all of it—the ugly, unending loop of my failure. “Why, Iris? That’s the question that never stops. Why did I get to live when they didn’t? It doesn’t make sense. It’s a debt I can never repay.”
My words hung in the dim air. I waited for her pity, for her to tell me I was being irrational.
Instead, her expression hardened into a look of fierce, protective anger.
She leaned forward, her hands gripping my arm again.
“Then don't try to repay it. Instead, you live. That’s how you honor them. Your survival wasn’t a debt.
It was a miracle. And you are a good man who has been carrying an impossible burden for far too long. ”
Her words battered against the walls I’d spent thirteen years reinforcing. I shook my head, a small, defeated movement. “You can't know that.”
“You’re right. I can’t.” Her anger dissolved, replaced by a look of such patient acceptance it stole the air from my lungs.
Her grip softened, and she slowly stroked my arm.
“No one can. And you don’t have to believe it right now.
Maybe you won’t believe it a year from now.
But that crack in the door you just opened?
The fact that you’re even questioning it after all this time?
That’s a start, Austin. That’s a huge, scary, very promising start. ”
I stared at the fierce sincerity in her eyes.
She wasn’t offering cheap platitudes or trying to fix me.
She was offering me a different perspective.
A hand in the darkness. Maybe even a lifeline.
For the first time, I didn’t immediately slap it away.
I held her gaze, a thirteen-year war raging inside me.
A slow, heavy breath shuddered out of me. “It’s not gonna be fast.”
A beautiful smile touched her lips. “Perhaps not. But you’ll get there. I know it.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” The admission was momentous, torn from a place deep inside me. “Being with you has made me realize that maybe life can be good. Not just… surviving.”
Her hand came up, and she brushed a stray tear from her cheek before resting her cool fingers against my rough, stubbled one. This time I let it be.
“Your life can be fulfilling, Austin. You deserve to be happy.”
The simple, soft conviction in her voice made something clench hard inside me. I had to focus on a scuff mark on the cabin floor to anchor myself.
“Were you and Caitlin serious?”
I nodded, still not looking at her. “Yeah. We’d been together a couple of years. Since high school. We always just figured… you know. We’d end up together. We thought we had all the time in the world, so what was the rush?”
“I’m so sorry, Austin. For everything you lost. If you ever need to talk about it… or if you don’t. Whatever you need. I’m here for you.”
“Thank you, sweetness.” Her support and her gentle strength were the final push I needed to tell her the rest. I met her gaze. “That’s what the argument with Eli and Braden was about. At the brewpub.”
Confusion clouded her eyes.
“They were worried.” The words came out slowly, reluctantly, each one a stone in my mouth. “They think you look like her. Like Caitlin.”
I saw it then. The subtle shift. The way her eyes went from pure empathy to something else. Uncertainty. A flicker of doubt.
“Blonde, blue eyes. Similar personality. They were worried about what I was doing.”
I rushed on, desperate to fix it, to explain before the doubt could take root.
“Iris, I told them they were wrong. I told them in no uncertain terms that I never once compared you two. That I care about you. For who you are. The sunny, noisy, amazing woman who has completely turned my life upside down.”
I reached for her and pulled her tightly against my chest as if I could physically shield her from the poison of the thought I had just planted. I wanted her to feel my sincerity, to believe me. I had just taken an enormous leap of faith, sharing the source of my deepest pain.
The tragedy that had defined my entire adult existence.
And in the same breath—in an attempt to be honest—I had handed her a perfectly valid reason to doubt everything.
To doubt me.
To doubt us.
A frigid, sinking sensation washed over me as I held her. I had finally opened the door to that bolted room in my mind, hoping to let in the light. I had an awful feeling that in doing so, I might have just plunged us both into a whole new kind of darkness.