Chapter 35
Sawyer
He gave her the space exactly the way he'd promised — no calls, no texts, no drive-by past the orchard gate under some flimsy professional pretense — and by the second week of it, the discipline had curdled into something that felt less like respect and more like a slow, private unraveling he wasn't sure how to name.
He worked. That was the only thing that still made sense to do with his hands, so he did it constantly, taking on bookings two counties over that he didn't need, editing galleries that had already been perfect the first pass, staying in the studio until the light outside had gone from evening to full dark without noticing the transition happen.
He told himself it was discipline. It felt, most nights, closer to hiding.
The Bennett wedding sat on his calendar eleven days out, unavoidable — the season's last booking, the one he'd have to shoot regardless of whatever remained unresolved between them, standing in her orchard with a camera in his hands while the woman he loved kept a careful, necessary distance he'd earned through nine days of exactly the mistake he'd promised her he wouldn't make.
He thought, more than once that week, about Camille.
About Chidi's vows, still lodged somewhere in his chest like a splinter that hadn't fully worked its way out.
About the particular, familiar shape of watching someone he loved decide, with good reason, that loving him wasn't the same as being able to trust him — and about how easy it would be, now, to let that conclusion settle into fact.
To decide, quietly, that this was simply confirmation of something true about him, something no amount of trying was ever going to fully undo, and that the kindest thing left to do was accept it and stop making everyone around him pay for finding that out the hard way.
He was sitting with exactly that thought, late on a Thursday night, when Milo let himself into the studio without knocking and found him staring at nothing in particular, laptop closed, the Bennett shot list sitting untouched on the desk beside him.
"You've been like this for two weeks," Milo said, dropping into the chair across from him without ceremony. "I gave you the first week. I'm done giving you the second one quietly."
"I'm fine."
"You've said that so many times this season it's basically stopped meaning anything when you say it.
" Milo leaned forward, no teasing in his voice at all tonight.
"Talk to me. Actually talk to me, not the version where you tell me you're fine and I pretend to believe you so we can both get back to work. "
Sawyer was quiet for a long moment, and then, because it was late and he was tired and some part of him had been carrying the thought alone for too many days now to keep doing it, he said it out loud.
"I think I've been telling myself a story since the marina meeting," he said.
"That this is a real mistake I made, one bad choice under pressure, and that it's fixable if I just give her enough space and enough time and enough proof.
But some nights — most nights, lately — I think the truer story is the one Camille told me.
That I'm just built this way. That I'll keep doing some version of this, quietly managing instead of trusting, for the rest of my life, no matter how many times I promise the next person it'll be different.
And I think maybe the honest thing to do is stop pretending I can fix that about myself and just...
let her go. Save her the trouble of finding out the hard way, twice. "
Milo was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice had an edge to it Sawyer hadn't heard from him before — not unkind, but sharper than his usual patience.
"That's the worst idea I've heard you have all season, and you once suggested shooting a beach wedding at low tide."
"Milo—"
"No, let me actually say this, because I think you're about to talk yourself into something you're going to regret a lot longer than nine days of bad judgment.
" Milo held up a hand. "You're doing the thing again.
The exact thing. You made one mistake — a real one, I'm not letting you off the hook for it — and instead of sitting in the discomfort of actually fixing it, slowly, the hard way, over time, you're reaching for the version where you just decide the outcome for both of you right now, tonight, alone in this studio, because deciding it yourself feels safer than waiting to find out what she actually decides. "
Sawyer opened his mouth to argue and found, uncomfortably, that he didn't have anything ready.
"You're not protecting her by giving up early," Milo went on.
"You're protecting yourself. From the possibility that you did the work and she still walks away.
That's a real possibility, by the way — I'm not going to sit here and tell you it isn't. She might.
She'd be within her rights to, after nine days of silence about something that mattered that much.
But deciding it for her, right now, before she's even had the full two weeks she asked for — that's not humility.
That's just the same managing instinct, aimed at yourself this time instead of at her. "
"So what am I supposed to do? She asked for space. I'm giving her space."
"You're giving her space. Good. Keep doing that — she asked for it, and you should honor it exactly as long as she needs it.
" Milo's voice softened slightly. "But space isn't the same as disappearing inside your own head and writing the ending before she's told you what it actually is.
You can give her room and still believe there's a version of this worth fighting for once that room's run its course.
Those aren't opposites. You're treating them like they are because it's easier to grieve something you've already decided is over than to sit in the genuine uncertainty of not knowing yet. "
Sawyer sat with that for a long time, the studio quiet around them, and felt something shift, slow and uncomfortable, underneath the exhaustion he'd been carrying for two weeks.
"What if she doesn't come back," he said finally, and it came out smaller and more honest than anything he'd said out loud in days. "What if I've actually done the thing this time? Proven the exact thing I was scared of proving."
"Then you'll survive that, the same way you survived Camille, and it'll hurt like hell, and it'll be real grief instead of a story you told yourself in advance to avoid feeling it later.
" Milo's expression had gone gentle now, the earlier sharpness spent.
"But you don't get to know that yet. Nobody does.
You're trying to skip past the not-knowing by deciding the worst version is already true, and I think you know, somewhere under all this, that it's not actually about protecting her.
It's about ending the waiting on your own terms instead of hers, because the waiting is unbearable and you'd rather have a bad answer than no answer at all. "
Sawyer looked at him for a long moment, the truth of it landing somewhere he couldn't argue his way out of.
"When did you get this good at this?" he asked, and it came out rough, half a laugh and half something closer to grief.
"Told you. Three years of watching you not be smart about it.
Some of it had to rub off eventually." Milo's mouth curved, small and real.
"Finish the Bennett shot list. Show up in eleven days and do your job the way you've done it every wedding this season, whatever's happened between you and her personally.
Let her have the whole two weeks she asked for, and not one day less, even if it kills you.
And then, when she's ready to talk, actually let her tell you what she's decided instead of deciding it for her first, the way you've apparently decided to keep doing to everyone in your life whether the news is good or bad. "
Sawyer nodded slowly, and reached for the laptop again, opening it back up to the Bennett file he'd been avoiding for two weeks, the cursor blinking over an empty shot list that suddenly felt less like a chore and more like the only honest thing left for him to do with his hands while the rest of it stayed, genuinely, unresolved.
He didn't know, closing the studio down well past midnight, whether Milo was right that there was still something worth fighting for on the other side of Josie's silence.
He only knew, walking out into the cool September night that he wasn't going to be the one who decided that answer for her, not this time, not after everything the last two weeks had cost them both.
He was going to wait. Genuinely wait, this time, instead of quietly managing his way toward an ending he'd written alone.
It was, he thought, driving home under a sky finally clear of storms, probably the first entirely honest thing he'd done since the marina meeting.