Chapter 10 #2
"I love you, Destiny. That will never change. But I'm starting to realize I've been asking myself to carry both our faith in this relationship, and I don't think that's something one person can do forever."
She looked at me the way she had at the tree line weeks earlier, when she'd finally turned around instead of walking away. There was no calculation on her face now. Only the weight of hearing the cost of her own fear from the man who had quietly carried it beside her.
I gave her a small nod.
"I've got a few things to take care of."
This time, when I turned toward the compound, I didn't look back.
I loved her enough to wait.
I just wasn't sure I could keep waiting alone.
***
EVERETT
I had been on the path behind them.
Not close enough to hear the words, just the tone.
The quality of two people standing at the edge of something, making different choices about what to do with it.
I had my own skill for reading that quality.
You develop it over twenty years of carrying a bond, unable to reach the person on the other side of it.
I watched Ty walk back toward the compound — his straight back, measured stride, and effortless movement of someone who has mastered carrying burdens without letting them alter his posture. I recognized that. You become so skilled at it that carrying becomes an appearance of calm.
Destiny stayed at the top of the path.
She was looking at the compound the same way Dana used to look at the lake — not seeing it, looking through it, running the same accounting she was always running.
I came to stand beside her. She did not look surprised. She had heard me on the path.
We stood there for a moment.
"Little one, that man has been standing in the open for a year."
She said nothing.
"Waiting has a price to pay," I paused. "That's what people get wrong about patience. They think it's passive. It isn't. Every day a man chooses to stay when he could go — that costs something. He's been paying it, with no receipt and no guarantee."
She looked at me then.
"I know," she said quietly.
"I know you know," I said. "The question is what you're going to do with the knowing."
I looked back toward where Ty had gone.
"I spent twenty-two years on the other side of what you're standing in right now, loving somebody I couldn't reach. Knowing she was out there, knowing the bond was real, knowing that all of it was still alive between us — and not being able to do a thing about it."
I paused.
"I would have given anything. Any single day of those twenty-two years. To stand exactly where he stands."
Destiny looked down and exhaled slowly. She stayed silent, and I didn't expect her to speak. I didn't say it for a reaction; I said it because it was true. True things carry a weight that settles in the body differently than advice does.
I kissed her forehead, left her there, and went down to the lake to sit with Dana.
Some things you give a person to carry on their own because the answer lies exactly in the carrying.
Dana was still at the water's edge, brush in hand, working the eastern bank the way she worked everything she had decided to reclaim — quietly, methodically, without announcing it. She heard my footsteps on the gravel and looked up.
She read my face the way she had always read my face.
"Destiny?" she said.
"She's all right," I said. "She's working through something."
I sat down in the chair beside her easel. The lake was still. Morning had gone gold around the edges.
Dana set her brush down. She looked at the water for a moment, then at me.
"Thank you," she said, her voice sweet, a slow smile spreading. "For loving her. For taking care of her the way you did when I couldn’t."
Something moved through my chest.
I looked at Dana. At those emerald eyes that were gaining life day by day. At the natural beauty she had always had, now with extra spice the years had added, too.
"She is my baby too," I said.
Her breath caught.
"Those early years I helped raise her meant everything to me. You're giving her my name. I paused. “I did it because that's what you do for yours. She is ours, Dana. She has always been ours.”
Dana pressed her lips together. Her eyes filled.
She reached over and took my hand the way she had been reaching for it since the sixteenth morning — deliberate, conscious, a woman choosing every time, never letting it become a habit, never letting it become less than what it was.
I closed my fingers around hers.
We sat at the lake's edge as the morning arrived, her hand in mine, reminiscing about our time together, laughing at the pillow fight in the living room and still arguing over the best flavor of ice cream.
A natural silence took over before she fully turned to face me.
“Twenty years, Ever. Tell me how you carried it.”
I thought about the question honestly before answering.
“I got up every morning,” I said at last. “That was most of it.” I took a slow breath. “I felt the bond. I knew you were alive somewhere, so I kept getting up.”
“And the rest of the years?”
“I created a life filled with work, purpose, and community," I told her, meeting her gaze. “But I never truly gave anyone my whole heart.” My tone remained calm as I spoke. “It wasn’t truly mine anymore; it was always yours.”
Dana looked down at our hands quietly.
“He tried to break me,” she said after a long silence. “In every way a person can be broken.” Her voice stayed steady. “Some days, I thought he’d succeeded.” She paused. “I’m not the girl who fell in love with you all those years ago, Ever.”
“No,” I agreed softly.
“I’m the woman who survived him.” She looked up at me then, her green eyes steady despite everything behind them. “I just don’t know if what’s left of me is enough to become who we were meant to be.”
I let the words sit between us without rushing to fix them. Then I reached over slowly, lifted her out of her wheelchair, and settled her on my lap.
She giggled and naturally snuggled into my chest, taking in my scent.
“Dana,” I said quietly, “I did not wait twenty years for a memory.”
Her breathing caught slightly, and my hand tightened gently around hers.
“You think something is missing because survival changed you.” I shook my head once. “But when I look at you, all I see is a woman strong enough to still be standing after everything meant to destroy her.”
I lifted my free hand carefully to her face, brushing my thumb softly along her cheek.
“You,” I said quietly. “This version of you, the woman sitting here right now.” I held her gaze. “That is the woman I love.”
Her eyes filled immediately.
“We are not starting over,” I told her. “We’re continuing.”
Our lips met. Unhurried and certain.
“We have time,” I whispered. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
That wasn’t a promise I was making.
It was one I had already spent twenty years keeping.