Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jake
SAWYER AND I make a half-hearted attempt at the dock repairs, but the morning has already emptied us. We stack the boards and leave the rest for another time.
I head back to my house, not because I don’t want to be with her, but because the grief has become too much to carry in company.
Alone, it hits me now.
The randomness. The finality. The sheer cruelty of it. One moment, a woman is driving her granddaughter to preschool. The next, she’s gone. No warning. No chance to say goodbye.
And that child, waking to a world without the person she trusted most.
I sit on the edge of the bed and drop my head into my hands. And let the tears come. For the loss we witnessed. For the helplessness. And for Sawyer, because now, I understand.
I understand the exhaustion that must come from carrying that kind of loss day after day. The quiet way it breaks you down. No wonder she left the hospital. No wonder she felt like she couldn’t keep going.
I don’t regret what I’ve said to her—about hope, about healing. But I understand now. I reach for my phone and dial before I can talk myself out of it. She answers on the second ring.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”
There’s a pause. The kind that feels like it’s holding something fragile.
“There’s something I need to say,” I tell her.
“What is it?”
“This morning, seeing what we saw, it made me realize I assumed too much. I thought I understood what you’ve been through. What it must have felt like to keep watching people die. I didn’t. And I’m sorry if I ever came across like I had any idea what that cost you.”
Her voice comes gently through the line. “You didn’t. Jake, you have nothing to apologize for.”
I don’t speak. I let her keep going.
“I’m just glad it was you,” she says softly. “If I had to go through something like that, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have been with.”
Her words settle over me. For the first time in hours, something inside me eases a little. And the bond between us deepens.