"I know."
We stood there in the empty venue and something shifted. Not healed—I didn't deserve healed. Not repaired. But less broken. Like a fracture that had stopped spreading, even if it hadn't started mending.
"What did Marcus say?" Ethan asked. "When you confronted him."
I thought back to that moment. Marcus's face when I'd said I was done. The way he'd looked at me—not angry, just confused. Like the rules of a game he'd always won had changed without warning.
"He said I was fake. That I'd been pretending my whole life. And said I was lying to myself about who I was."
Ethan didn't respond right away. Just listened. The way he used to—patient, unhurried, giving the words space to land.
"He was right. About the lying part. But at least I'm trying to stop."
"One honest thing at a time," Ethan said.
I looked at him, surprised. That was exactly what Derek had told me on the bridge.
"A friend told me that once," I said.
"That's good advice."
"Yeah. It is."
Ethan checked his clipboard again, then looked at me. His expression was still guarded, still careful—but something behind it had loosened. Like he was allowing himself to see me again instead of just the person who'd hurt him.
"This is going to take time. The trust thing. I'm not saying it's impossible. Just... slow."
My throat ached. "I understand."
"But showing up today? Doing the work? It matters." He held my gaze. "More than the words."
I nodded. Didn't trust myself to speak without my voice cracking.
"I should get some editing done before the meeting tonight," Ethan said, but his tone was different than it had been when I'd walked in. The professional distance was still there, but the coldness had thawed—just slightly, just enough to feel. "See you at six?"
"Yeah. I'll be here."
He gathered his things and we walked toward the door together. The bell chimed when he pulled it open. Late afternoon light spilled across the sidewalk—golden, warm, the kind of light that made even a side street in downtown Ashford look like something worth photographing.
Ethan paused outside. "The event's going to be good. We did good work."
"Yeah," I said. "We did."
He gave me a small nod—the first genuine one since before that night—then headed down the street. I watched him go. His walk was the same as always—unhurried, slightly loose, the walk of someone who moved through the world on his own terms.
I turned the other direction.
The weight in my chest hadn't lifted entirely. The shame was still there—would probably always be there, in some form. What I'd done to Ethan couldn't be undone with apologies or good intentions or volunteer coordination for a mixer.
But for the first time in a while, I felt something other than hopeless.
He'd said it would take time.
He hadn't said it was impossible.
And underneath the shame, something else was taking root. That maybe I didn't have to fix everything at once. That maybeone honest thing at a timewas actually enough.
It was more than I deserved.
