Chapter 39
Sawyer
He'd carried the album from the truck without deciding, exactly, to bring it — just picked it up on instinct, the way his hands did most things that mattered before the rest of him caught up, and by the time they reached the fallen log at the far point, the lake dark and still in front of them, he was holding it against his chest like something he wasn't sure yet he had permission to offer.
"I need to say the whole thing first," he said, before she could sit, before the moment could slide into something easier than the conversation actually required. "Not the short version. The whole thing, the way I should have given it to you nine days before you needed to ask."
"Okay." She sat, patient, giving him the room to do it properly this time.
"I turned down Lang's trade. The six weeks, in exchange for my father's exclusive contract at whatever rate Lang set.
I should have told you that the same night, and I didn't, because after everything else went wrong that evening, I got scared that showing up with I turned it down would sound like I was asking for credit instead of just telling you the truth.
" He sat beside her, careful distance still between them, wanting her to close it if she chose to, not assuming he'd earned the right to close it himself.
"I called the regional directory too. Priti Anand, the new editor.
Asked her to run a full feature on the orchard — two seasons of photography, no fee, no approval rights over the copy.
It runs next week. I don't know if it changes anything with Lang's deadline.
I did it because it was true, not because I thought it would fix what I broke. "
"I know about the feature," she said quietly. "Priti called Del yesterday, asking to confirm some details for the piece. I didn't know you'd offered it without asking for anything back."
"I wasn't trying to buy anything back with it.
I want to be clear about that." He held her gaze, steady.
"I spent two weeks thinking about what Milo said to me — that I was managing again instead of trusting, and that giving you space had to actually mean giving you space, not performing patience while I secretly hoped it would earn me an outcome.
I tried to just let the two weeks be two weeks.
I don't know if I did it perfectly. But I tried. "
"You did it well," she said, and something in her voice had gone soft in a way that made his chest ache with hope he was still afraid to fully let in.
"Better than well, actually. You gave me exactly what I asked for, and you didn't make me feel guilty for asking, and you kept showing up to do your job today like a professional even though I know it must have been hard. "
"It was the hardest wedding I've shot all season.
" He said it plainly, no exaggeration in it.
"Not because of the work. Because you were twenty feet away all day and I didn't know if I was going to get to say any of this to you tonight, or if this was going to be the last time I ever got to stand in this orchard as anything other than a vendor you used to know. "
She was quiet for a moment, looking out at the water, and then, gently: "What's the book?"
He looked down at it, the weight of it suddenly enormous in his hands.
"It's every frame of you I never delivered to a client, because they weren't the client's photographs to have.
Six weddings' worth. I didn't put it together as a gesture to win you back, exactly — I started it before I knew if you'd ever want to see it.
I think I made it because I needed proof, for myself, of how long I've actually loved you, not just how loudly I said it once on a dock in June. "
He handed it to her, and she opened it slowly, the string lights of Ashworth glowing up from the first page, her own face mid-laugh at the cake table, crouched at a child's shoelaces in storm-blue light, steady on a swinging light line at Caldwell, unguarded at the edge of the Whitfield dance floor — six weddings of a woman he'd apparently been falling in love with in real time without ever fully admitting it to himself, caught frame after frame in the specific unposed truth he'd spent his whole career learning to find.
She turned the pages slowly, and by the last one — the frame from the guest house porch, taken at some distance he still didn't remember setting up, her head tipped back laughing at something just out of frame the night the storm finally broke — her eyes had gone bright, unshed tears catching the last of the evening light.
"I've loved you since before I let myself say it," she said quietly, closing the book carefully in her lap. "I think you might have loved me even before that."
"I think I did." He reached over, careful, giving her every chance to pull away if she needed to, and she didn't — she took his hand instead, laced their fingers together the way she had on the fallen log the first time, deliberate and certain.
"Josie, I'm not going to promise you I'll never make a mistake like the marina meeting again.
I don't think that's a promise anyone gets to make honestly.
But I can promise you I know the shape of it now — I know what it looks like when I start managing instead of trusting, and I know how much it costs the people I love when I do.
I'm not going to stop trying to get it right just because I got it wrong once.
I'm asking you to let me keep trying, with you, for as long as you'll let me. "
She was quiet for a long moment, and then she leaned into him, her head against his shoulder the way it had been the night the storm broke, and said, softly, "I'm in.
All of it. The trying, the getting-it-wrong-sometimes, the whole complicated rest of it.
" She lifted her head, looked at him fully, steady and certain in the dark.
"I spent two weeks scared I wasn't built to trust anyone that completely again.
I've spent the last four days figuring out that I already do trust you, completely, and the fear was never really about whether I could.
It was about being brave enough to let myself. "
He kissed her then, slow and certain, the album resting closed between them on the log, and when they finally broke apart, she was smiling in a way he hadn't seen in two weeks — unguarded, entirely present, exactly the smile he'd fallen in love with somewhere over the course of a season neither of them had planned to have change everything.
"Season's over," she said, resting her forehead against his. "Eleven days until we find out what Lang's deadline actually means for this place."
"Whatever it means," he said, "I'm not going anywhere before we find out. And this time, whatever happens, you'll know everything I know, exactly when I know it. No more managing. Just the truth, even the scared parts."
"Even the scared parts," she agreed, and settled into him, the lake dark and quiet in front of them, the season's last wedding finally, fully behind them, and eleven days of uncertain future still ahead — but this time, for the first time since the marina meeting, neither of them facing it alone.