"Thank you," I said finally, my voice rough with something I couldn't name.
Mama P nodded once, satisfied. "You need anything before you go to bed?"
"No, ma'am. I'm good."
"I'm always around, if I can be of service," she said, picking up her needles again, fingers moving through the familiar motions. "That's what we're here for. To help each other carry it."
I stood, patting her arm as I passed, meaning it as gratitude and goodbye and acknowledgment all at once.
She grabbed my hand, her grip surprisingly strong for someone her age, her fingers warm and certain.
"You don't have to do this life alone," she said, looking up at me with eyes that had seen too much and survived, anyway. "Ever."
A small part of me believed her.
Maybe more than a small part.
I showered, letting the hot water pound against my shoulders and neck, trying to wash off the weight of the night. But it didn't help. The heat just made me more aware of how tired I was, how heavy everything felt, how long I'd been carrying things I should have put down years ago.
When I finally climbed into bed, sleep didn't come.
Just the years stretching out behind me like a road I couldn't see the end of. The cowardice I'd built into a fortress, brick by brick, justification by justification. The lonely nights spent convincing myself I was fine, that I didn't need anyone, that being alone was safer than being known. The time away from my brothers, from the ranch, from everything that had mattered before I decided running was easier than staying.
The distance I'd put between myself and Sophie without even realizing it— years of silence because I didn't know how to be the person she remembered, the boy who'd been her best friend before I learned how to be someone else, someone harder, someone who didn't need anything from anyone.
I wasn't sure if I was ready to face that yet. To crack open the walls I'd spent years building. To tell Sophie about my father and my mother and the guilt that lived in my chest like a second heartbeat, constant and unavoidable.
But maybe I could.
Maybe that was what Mama P had been trying to tell me. That asking for help wasn't weakness. That letting someone inwasn't surrender. That being seen—really seen—was the bravest thing you could do.
That being known was different than being seen, and both mattered.
I closed my eyes, listening to Charleston breathe outside my window—distant traffic, crickets, the faint hum of the city settling into sleep like it did every night, indifferent to the weight people carried inside these walls.
And I let myself imagine what it might feel like to stop carrying everything alone.
To tell Sophie the truth. About my father. My mother. The ranch. The years of running.
To ask for help instead of pretending I didn't need it.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe soon.
Maybe I was finally ready.
15
SOPHIE
The morning after Dusty’s unfolded gently, like Charleston knew better than to rush anyone who’d stayed up too late dancing.
We walked the harbor just after breakfast, the three of us moving at an easy, unspoken pace—Beth with sunglasses perched on her head, Natasha carrying iced coffee like a lifeline, me breathing in salt air and letting my thoughts drift where they wanted. Boats cut through the water in slow lines. The sun glinted off masts and windows and the pale sweep of the Ravenel Bridge in the distance, its cables rising clean and white against the sky.
“Every time I come here,” Beth said, stretching her arms overhead, “I feel like my nervous system resets.”
“You came here once before,” Natasha reminded her.
