He doesn’t move closer. Keeps his hands loose at his sides.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. No preamble. No softening.
My fingers curl against the edge of the table, wood biting into my palm.
“For what I did. The bet. For using my position to get close to you. For taking away your ability to choose freely. I don’t expect forgiveness.” He continues, “I just needed you to hear me say it.”
He pauses, breath steady.
“What I did was wrong,” he adds. “Full stop.”
Then he nods once, like the conversation is finished, and steps back.
“Thank you for letting me say it,” he says. “I won’t bring it up again.”
He turns away before I can answer, heading backtoward the others, picking up a coil of rope and handing it off to Cristian without breaking stride.
I stay where I am, palm flat on the table, breathing through the quiet he left behind.
My chest tightens, not with relief, exactly. With something steadier.
For the first time since the truth came out, I don’t feel cornered by his remorse. Or responsible for what he does with it.
The apology didn’t ask me to carry it.
I pick up the batteries again and finish lining them up, the rhythm returning easily.
When I glance up a moment later, Kieran is laughing quietly at something Stefan says, sun on his shoulders, attention fully where it should be.
Not on me.
And somehow, that’s what makes it possible to keep breathing.
43
NIGHT OF FIRE (KIERAN)
The channel pinches after the bend, and the marker Mihai mentioned yesterday isn’t where it’s supposed to be after last spring’s flooding, the waterline still deciding what it wants to keep and what it wants to erase. I tell him I’ll scout the stretch and radio back once I confirm the landing point.
“Quick, Kieran.” He nods and says in his thick-accented English, “Ten minutes.”
His pod is spread along the swaying boat: three boys pretending they’re not competing and a girl who very obviously is. Lines out, shoulders hunched with concentration. A bucket sits between their feet, half full of nothing and hope. When I glance back, Wren is ankle-deep near the reeds, braid down her back, sun on her shoulders. She’s listening to one of the boys explain something with too much confidence and, from the look on her face, not enough evidence. Eyes wide and expression serene, she lets him talk himself all the way to the end of his own logic.
The engine hums low as I ease forward, careful not to churn the shallows. The Delta spreads out in muted greensand silvers—water braided through reeds, dragonflies flashing at the edges, the air heavy with wet earth and sun-warmed rot.
I won’t be gone long.
The channel forks sooner than I expect. A quiet divergence—one path widening, the other narrowing. I slow the skiff, engine dropping to an idle. The water here is darker, tannin-stained.
I check the GPS. Signal’s weak but still there. The map shows a marker ahead—should be red, indicating the main passage—but the post I can see through the reeds is sun-bleached and unmarked. I angle left, choosing the narrower passage. It feels right in my body—less drag, cleaner line, the instinct I trust on the ice. The skiff slides forward easily, the engine barely whispering.
The banks close in, the air thickening with heat and wet vegetation. The smell changes—mud, rot, something sweet and alive underneath it. I wipe sweat from my neck with the back of my wrist and scan for the landing Mihai described. A stand of willow. A shallow shelf. A break in the reeds.
I see none of it.
Instead, the waterway bends again. Then again. Each turn reasonable. Each one making the last harder to retrace.
I cut the engine completely and let the skiff drift.
