"Yes," he says finally.
"I go back to it sometimes. In my head." I pause. "I've rewritten it a hundred different ways. What I should have said. What you should have said. How it could have gone differently."
"How does it go?" His voice comes out quieter than usual. "In the version where it goes differently."
I turn and look at him directly. "In the version where it goes differently, you tell me the truth. Whatever the truth actually was. I didn't need you to feel what I felt. I just needed you not to lie about what you felt."
Something in his jaw tightens.
"And what do you think the truth was?" he asks carefully.
"I think you wanted me. I've always thought that. I just couldn't understand why wanting me made you so cruel."
He's quiet for a long moment, and I watch him decide something.
"I come to the cabin," he says finally. "More than makes sense for a man who says it was nothing. Every time I'm on that porch, I'm back there. Standing where I was. Watching you walk out in that dress and knowing exactly what you were going to say before you said it." He looks at me directly. "I stand there and I let myself remember it because I can't seem to stop."
My breath catches.
"Then why—" I stop. "Why did you handle it like that? If you knew. If you felt something. Why did you make it so ugly?"
"Because ugly was the only version that would work."
"Work for what?"
"For making sure you actually left. If I'd been gentle about it, if I'd said the right things, you would have stayed in reach. You would have kept hoping."
I stare at him. "So you humiliated me on purpose."
"Yes."
"Do you have any idea what those words did? Not the rejection. I could have survived the rejection. The words. Pathetic. Embarrassing. Following you around like a lost puppy." I say them back to him flat and clean. "I was eighteen years old and I trusted you and you chose the most devastating version of not available to you."
"Yes."
"Stop agreeing with me."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to defend yourself." My voice cracks slightly and I pull it back hard. "I want you to give me something to argue against."
"What would you do with me?" he asks. "If I defended myself. If I gave you a reason that made sense. What would you do with that?"
I open my mouth and close it.
The water steams between us and I don't have an answer.
"I'm still furious at you," I say finally, quieter. "I want you to know that. Four years of barely looking at me. Four years of treating me like I was something inconvenient. That doesn't disappear."
"I know."
"So you're not going to defend yourself?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you're right." He says it simply, without qualification. "The way I handled that conversation was wrong. I was cruel when I didn't have to be. I've known that since the second you walked back inside that night." He holds my gaze across the water. "I'm sorry for that. For all of it."
