The fact that I couldn’t swim—or ride a bike, or read an analogue clock—didn’t matter.
Devin mattered.
And I couldn’t live knowing the only thing standing between me and happily-ever-after with someone I loved was lettingthembe brave. Devin wasn’t even asking me to get in the kayak.
He was just asking me to accept that he wanted to. And it didn’t really matter if I thought his reasons were bad.
It mattered if I respected him. If I trusted him.Believedin him.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to support him,” I said, finally.
That was all Devin had wanted from me today. Support. Someone to watch him try his best at something that was important to him.
Someone to be proud where all he’d heard before was thathewasn’t good enough. Maybe not in those words, those exact words that’d made me freeze up, but I’d fallen in love with him in the first place at least partly because we hurt in the same ways.
What he needed was someone to soothe that hurt.
What I wanted was to be that someone.
“When’s his race… thingy… start?” Aiden asked.
“I dunno.”
Start times were at random today, so no one had an unfair advantage by getting to pick their time. They wouldn’t know until their names were called who was going next.
“Well. If you’re quick, maybe you could still support him,” Aiden said. “I bet it’d mean a lot.”
Again, Aiden was right.
This was why he was my best friend. He waswaybetter at this than me.
I glanced at the clock. Seven a.m. The first start time was in half an hour.
It’d take me that long to get there.
“Thanks Aiden,” I said in a hurry. “Gotta go.”
22
Devin
“Glad you finally figured outhe wasn’t good enough for you,” Brad said, turning out of the cabin park and onto the main road.
Good enough.
There were those words again. Exactly the wrong words. The two little words that’d just torn apart the best thing that’d ever happened to me.
I couldn’t stand to think of the look on Morgan’s face.
Iwasa coward. It didn’t matter if I won this competition anymore. It didn’t matter if I even competed. I’d let fear make me walk away instead of standing and begging for forgiveness.
Instead of being brave enough to give up whatIwanted to do the one thing Morgan had asked of me. It didn’t really matter whether or not he was right, it mattered that he wasworried, that he didn’t want me to do this, and that it wouldn’t have cost me anything but my pride not to.
“I wasn’t…rightfor him,” I said, unable to bring myself to repeat the wordsgood enoughagain.
“Right? Exactly,” Brad said cheerfully. “Glad you realize it. He would only have dragged you down.”
“That’s not true,” I said, fighting back the urge to cry. Not in front of Brad.Notin front of Brad.
