They walked without much direction, their shoes crunching lightly over gravel and fallen leaves. Street lamps flickered on, casting soft pools of light along the winding paths. The park wasn’t crowded, just a few scattered silhouettes moving through the trees, occasional murmurs of conversation, and the distant laughter of kids lingering on the playground.
Catherine found herself slowing, adjusting her pace to match Sloane’s naturally unhurried stride.
“You always walk like you’re being timed,” Sloane remarked, bumping her shoulder lightly against Catherine’s.
Catherine quirked a brow. “I usually am. I have to be efficient at the hospital.”
“It’s called stress,” Sloane countered.
They turned down a quieter path lined with tall, slender trees, their branches arching overhead like a canopy. Catherine took a breath, inhaling the earthy scent of damp bark and crushed leaves. Her body felt unusually light—less armor, less edge.
Sloane slid her hands into her coat pockets. “Can I ask you something?”
“That depends,” Catherine replied, not unkindly.
“Your family,” Sloane said after a beat. “You’ve never really talked about them.”
Catherine stiffened.“They’re...complicated,” she said at first, her eyes scanning the path ahead.
Sloane didn’t press. She just let the question sit there, soft and unthreatening.
Catherine stopped beside a wrought-iron bench and sat, smoothing her hands over her knees. After a moment, Sloane sat too, close but not touching. The silence stretched.
“I’m the eldest,” Catherine began slowly, voice quieter now. “Which means I was the example and expectation for the others.”
She didn’t look at Sloane as she spoke, choosing instead to watch a squirrel dart across the grass and vanish up a tree.
“My mother believed excellence wasn’t a goal; it was a minimum requirement. Emotions were distractions, a weakness. If I got a ninety-eight on an exam, the question was why not a hundred. If I won an award, it was about what came next.”
Sloane said nothing.
Catherine's hands clenched lightly in her lap.
“There wasn’t space to fail. Or to feel. I learned to curate myself. To become what they needed me to be.”
She exhaled, slow and shaky.
“If I wasn’t exceptional, I wasn’t seen.”
That last sentence came out softer than she meant. Like a confession or maybe an old wound, cracking open in the dusk.
Beside her, Sloane didn’t flinch. She didn’t launch into reassurances or try to stitch the words back together with platitudes. She just let the silence settle again, heavy and real and kind.
“I see you,” Sloane said eventually, voice low.
Catherine turned her head. Sloane’s gaze was steady, a quiet force.“You don’t have to earn that with me,” she said. “You don’t have to impress me or fix things or perform. You don’t have to be anything. Just...be.”
Catherine’s throat tightened. She blinked a few times, but her vision still blurred at the edges.
A breeze moved through the trees, rustling the branches above them.
“You make it sound easy,” Catherine whispered.
“I didn’t say it was,” Sloane replied. “I just said you don’t have to do it alone.”
Catherine’s eyes dropped to the space between them. Without thinking, her fingers inched toward Sloane’s, brushing against them, and Sloane didn’t move away. After a moment, Catherine leaned, just slightly, until her shoulder pressed against Sloane’s. It was tentative, careful. They sat like that for a while, saying nothing. Just letting the night hold them.
Somewhere in the distance, music drifted faintly from an open window, a soft melody played on piano, melancholic but beautiful.
