Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
STEPHEN
Two weeks.
Fourteen days of Lydia in my cabin, in my bed, in my training field, in every corner of my life that used to be empty.
Fourteen days of her voice in the mornings talking to dogs.
Her toothbrush next to mine. Her field notebooks stacked on my kitchen counter beside my training logs.
Scout sleeping at the foot of our bed like she was born there.
Our bed. When did I start calling it that.
Koda graduates his threshold mapping protocol on a Tuesday morning, and I stand in the training field and watch a dog who couldn't hold a calm sit two weeks ago execute a scent detection sequence with loose body language, genuine drive, and a tail wag that comes from somewhere deep and real.
Lydia stands beside me. Close enough that our shoulders touch. She doesn't say I told you so. She just watches Koda work with those amber eyes full of quiet pride, and when the dog finishes his last rep and trots over to sit at my heel, she looks at me and says, "That's engagement."
"That's engagement," I agree.
And it is. Not just the dog. Everything.
Every protocol she's introduced, every modification she's made, every patient, persistent shift from pressure-based training to trust-based training has produced results I can measure in my notebook and feel in my gut.
The dogs are better. Calmer. More reliable under stress because the stress response isn't their default setting anymore.
I'm better too. I sleep until five now instead of four.
I eat three meals a day because Lydia puts food in front of me and watches me finish it with an expression that says she'll sit there until I do.
I've stopped running drills past dark because she's in my cabin making dinner, and the pull of her is stronger than the pull of the work.
I'm in love with her.
The realization doesn't arrive like a thunderbolt. It arrives like sunrise. Slow. Inevitable. A brightening that started the moment she got out of that Subaru and hasn't stopped, and now I'm standing in full daylight blinking at the obvious.
I'm in love with Lydia Brooke, and she's leaving in seven days.
Her three-week consultation ends next Wednesday.
She has a deposition to prepare for. A family to testify against. A life in Vermont that she hasn't talked about dismantling.
And I have sixty acres of mountain and a head full of ghosts and no right to ask a woman like her to build something permanent on a foundation this cracked.
My phone rings at noon. Not a number I recognize.
"Stephen Nelson?"
"Speaking."
"This is Agent Daniels, Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'm the lead investigator on the Brooke breeding operation case. I understand Ms. Brooke is currently consulting with your K9 facility in Montana."
Something cold slides down my spine. "She is."
"We need her in Concord earlier than planned. The defense filed a motion to dismiss based on a statute of limitations argument, and the judge has moved the deposition up. She needs to be in New Hampshire by Friday."
Friday. Three days from now.
"You should tell her that yourself," I say.
"I've been trying to reach her. Her phone's going to voicemail. If you could pass along the message, it's urgent. The entire case depends on her testimony."
I hang up and stand in the supply shed holding my phone and feeling the walls go up. One by one. Brick by brick. The same walls that kept me functional for four years before she arrived and took them apart with her bare hands.
Friday. She leaves Friday. The case depends on her.
Of course it does. Because Lydia is the kind of person that everything depends on. She's the linchpin. The one who shows up. The one who speaks the truth even when it costs her everything.
And I'm the man who pulled forty-seven people from the ocean and couldn't save two.
I can't save her from this. I can't stand between her and a federal courtroom and a family that's already disowned her.
I can't follow her to New Hampshire and hold her hand through a deposition that's going to rip her apart.
All I can do is stand on this mountain and watch her drive away, and the math on that equation is one I already know by heart.
People leave. Or the ocean takes them. Either way, you end up standing on the shore alone.
Lydia finds me in the kennel run at two-thirty.
I'm cleaning Duke's space. I've been cleaning Duke's space for forty-five minutes, which is about thirty minutes longer than it needs, but my hands won't stop moving and my brain won't stop calculating all the ways this ends with me alone in this cabin again.
"Hey." She leans against the fence. Her hair is down today, loose around her shoulders, honey-brown in the afternoon sun.
She's wearing my flannel over her tank top.
She wears my flannel every day now, and every day the possessive animal in my chest growls mine.
"Clara called. She wants us to come to dinner at her and Dan's on Thursday night.
She said Logan and Erica might be there too. "
"You should call Agent Daniels."
Her face changes. The warmth drains. "What?"
"He called my phone because yours is going to voicemail. Your deposition's been moved up. They need you in New Hampshire by Friday."
She pulls her phone from her pocket. Checks it. The screen is dark. "Battery died. I was in the field with Scout all morning and didn't notice." She looks up at me. "Friday?"
"Defense filed a motion. Judge moved the timeline.
" I keep cleaning. Keep my hands busy. Keep my eyes on the kennel floor because if I look at her right now, I'll see the exact moment she starts calculating her departure, and I can't watch that math happen on her face.
"You should book a flight tonight. Billings has connections through Denver. "
"Stephen. Stop cleaning and look at me."
I stop. I look.
She's gripping the fence with both hands. Her knuckles are white. And her eyes are searching my face with that devastating ability to read everything I'm trying to hide.
"You're shutting down," she says.
"I'm relaying information."
"You're relaying information with a voice that sounds like a training command and a face that looks like it did the day I got here. Before." She opens the kennel gate and steps inside. Scout stays at the fence, watching. "Talk to me. What's happening right now?"
"You're leaving Friday. That's what's happening."
"I'm going to a deposition. That's not the same as leaving."
"You've got a case to testify in. A family situation that needs your attention. A career and a home in Vermont." I drop the brush in the bucket. Water splashes my boots. "You came here for three weeks. The three weeks are almost up."
"Are you serious right now?" Her voice sharpens.
The patience I've watched her extend to every frightened, reactive animal she's ever worked with thins to something raw.
"Are you standing in a dog kennel giving me a logistics briefing about my own life like I haven't been sleeping in your bed for two weeks? "
"What do you want me to say, Lydia?"
"I want you to say what you're actually feeling instead of packaging it into something manageable."
The words crack through me. Because she's right. She's always right. She reads me the way she reads her dogs, and right now she's reading the lip-licking and the pacing and the rigid posture and translating it into the truth I won't speak.
"I'm feeling like I've done this before.
" The words come out harder than I intend.
Rougher. "I've stood on the shore and watched people I care about go into the water, and I've learned that the math never works.
You save who you can save and you lose who you lose, and the losing is the part that never stops. "
"I'm not going into the water. I'm going to a deposition."
"You're going back to a world where I can't reach you.
Where I can't do anything except stand here and wait to find out how much it costs you.
" I step toward her. Close the distance that I've been trying to maintain all afternoon.
"I watched a father and his fifteen-year-old son drown because I couldn't get to them in time.
I held a woman and her daughter in one arm and watched two people die thirty feet away from me.
And I have spent four years building a life where I never have to stand on that edge again, and you... "
My voice breaks. Actually breaks. In the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a dog kennel, in front of the woman I love.
"You put me right back there," I say. "Because losing you would be worse."
Her face crumbles. The sharp edges dissolve into something so tender and hurt that my chest caves in.
"Then come with me," she says.
"To New Hampshire?"
"To New Hampshire. To the deposition. To wherever I need to go." She takes my hands. Pulls them away from where they've been clenched at my sides. Presses them between both of hers. "You don't have to stand on the shore and watch me go. You can be in the water with me."
The water.
She doesn't know what she's saying. Or maybe she does. Maybe she chose that exact metaphor because she knows it's the one that will reach me, because Lydia Brooke always knows exactly what language will get through.
"I can't," I say. And it's the truest, most broken thing I've ever admitted. "I don't know how to stand next to someone and not be the one saving them. I don't know how to watch you go through something terrible and just be there without fixing it. That's not how I'm built."
"It's exactly how you're built. It's what you do with the dogs every single day.
" Tears are running down her face now. Silent, steady tears that she doesn't wipe away.
"You stand next to them. You create the space.
You let them work through it. That's your whole method now.
The one I taught you. The one you just used to transform Koda. "
"You're not a dog, Lydia."
"No. I'm the woman who loves you. And I'm telling you that what I need is not a rescue swimmer. It's a partner."
The word loves detonates in my chest. I hear it. I feel every letter of it. And the part of me that has been running toward this woman since the day she arrived slams directly into the part of me that has been running from everything else.
"I need time," I say.
The silence between those words and her response lasts forever.
"Okay." She lets go of my hands. Steps back. The distance between us opens like a wound. "Take your time. I'll be at the inn tonight. I need to pack and make calls and figure out flights."
"Lydia."
"Don't." She holds up one hand. Her chin is trembling but her voice is steady. "Don't tell me you care about me while you're standing ten feet away with your arms crossed. I grew up in a house where people said all the right words and did all the wrong things. I can't do that again."
She walks out of the kennel. Whistles for Scout. The Malinois falls into heel without looking back.
I watch her cross the gravel to her car. I watch her open the door, load Scout, climb in. I watch her start the engine and pull down the drive and disappear around the bend.
I stand in the kennel with a cleaning brush in a bucket and a heart that's ripping itself apart.
Duke appears at the gate of his run. Lies down. Puts his chin on his paws and looks at me with those old, wise eyes that have watched me do everything wrong for four years.
"Don't start," I tell him.
He exhales through his nose.
My phone buzzes.
Logan Creed:
Heard from Sawyer you've got a woman at your place. First, congratulations. Second, if you screw it up, the whole town is going to have opinions and none of them will be on your side. Fair warning.
I stare at the message. Then another comes in.
Ryan Cole:
Mira says if you let Lydia leave without telling her you love her, she's going to drive to your cabin and "have words." Her words. I'm scared of her when she's like this. You should be too.
And then a third.
Drew Briggs:
Brother. Whatever's happening. Don't be the man who walks away from the best thing that ever showed up at his door. Trust me on this. Some of us almost made that mistake.
I put the phone down. Sit on the kennel floor with my back against the wall and my forearms on my knees and my head bowed.
Forty-seven people I pulled from the ocean.
Two I couldn't reach.
One I just let walk away.
The evening goes dark. I feed the dogs. I check the perimeter.
I do every single thing on my routine list with the mechanical precision of a man running a protocol because the alternative is feeling, and feeling right now means acknowledging that Lydia Brooke told me she loved me in a dog kennel and I said I need time.
I need time.
Like time is going to change the math. Like time is going to make me less afraid of losing someone. Like distance ever healed a single thing in my life.
Distance is what I do. Distance is what I've always done.
When my father died, I put distance between myself and the coast. When Thomas and Caleb drowned, I put distance between myself and the ocean.
When the nightmares started, I put distance between myself and every human being who tried to get close.
And now I'm putting distance between myself and the first person who's ever made the distance feel like what it is.
Not safety.
Punishment.
I sit on my porch at midnight with a cold cup of coffee and the mountains black against the stars and Lydia's pillow still on my bed and her book on my nightstand and her scent in every room of my cabin.
Her flannel is draped over the back of the kitchen chair where she left it this morning.
I pick it up. Press it to my face. Breathe her in.
And I know. With the same certainty I used to know the water, the same way I used to read the current and the swell and know exactly where a drowning person would surface.
I know where she is.
I know I need to go to her.
I know that going to her means going into the water. Not literally. But every way that matters. It means letting go of the shore. It means trusting that if I reach for her, she'll be there.
It means being the partner she asked for instead of the rescue swimmer she didn't need.
My phone sits on the porch railing. I pick it up.
Me:
What time is your flight?
Three dots. Then:
Lydia:
Tomorrow at 2pm from Billings.
Me:
Don't leave without seeing me first.
A long pause. Long enough that my heart stops beating.
Lydia:
I won't.
I set the phone down and go inside. I've got eight hours to figure out how to be the man she deserves.
I'm going to need every one of them.