The kindness in his voice was going to kill me. I'd come back to Hollow Pines expecting judgment, recrimination, the kind of bitter “I told you so” that would have been easier to handle than this careful compassion.
“I fucked up,” I said. “Pretty spectacularly. The whole thing. Chicago, the photography, pretending I knew what I wanted when I clearly didn't have a clue.”
“Everyone fucks up.”
“Not like this. Not this completely.”
Evan leaned back against the booth, considering me with that steady attention that had always made me feel like he was seeing more than I was ready to share.
“You know what I think?” he said.
“What?”
“I think you're being too hard on yourself. And I think maybe what you learned in Chicago wasn't failure—it was what you actually wanted. What mattered.”
“And what if what I wanted was something I'd already walked away from?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Evan's smile was soft around the edges, sad and hopeful in equal measure.
“Then maybe it's a good thing you're home.”
Outside, Hollow Pines went about its morning business, oblivious to the fact that something important was happening in Martha's café. Something that felt like forgiveness and possibility and the tentative beginning of finding my way back to who I used to be.
Before I'd learned to be afraid of wanting things I thought I couldn't have.
“More coffee?” Martha appeared beside our table like she'd been waiting for the right moment, pot in hand and that knowing smile that suggested she'd been eavesdropping with professional efficiency.
“Please,” Evan said, pushing his cup toward her.
“Make it two,” I added, settling back in my seat.
Because apparently I wasn't going anywhere. Not yet. Maybe not for a while.
And for the first time since stepping off that wheezing bus, that felt exactly right.
Somehow we'd endedup wandering through the residential streets that bordered the old part of town. It felt surreal, being here with Evan like this, both of us older and carrying the weight of years that had carved us into different people. But also the same people, underneath it all.
“Remember when Mrs. Wren used to chase kids away from her garden with that wooden spoon?” I asked, nodding toward a house with an immaculate yard that still looked like it belonged in a magazine.
“She still does,” Evan said, and I could hear the smile in his voice even though I wasn't looking at him. “Caught Tommy Morrison stealing tomatoes last week. Kid's twenty-two now, but she still treats him like he's twelve.”
“Some things never change.”
“Some things,” he agreed, but there was weight in the words that made me glance at him sideways.
We'd both changed. That much was obvious just from the way we moved through space now.
The duck pond sat at the edge of Riverside Park like it had been waiting for us, surrounded by benches that had seen better decades and a walking path that probably got more use from dog walkers than actual walkers. A family of mallards paddled around the murky water.
“I used to come here when I needed to think,” Evan said, settling onto one of the benches with the easy grace of someone who'd grown into his body instead of fighting it.
“What did you think about?” I asked, dropping down beside him. Close enough to catch the scent of motor oil and something wilder underneath, but not so close that it felt like I was presuming anything.
“You, mostly.”
The admission stole my breath and made my chest tight with something that felt like grief and hope tangled together.
“Evan—”
