I dragged a hand down my face and exhaled hard through my nose. “Jesus, Libby…”
“It came at me and I didn’t have a choice—”
“You shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” I said. “Not alone, not without someone watching your back—”
“Someone had to go!” The words came back at me with real force now, the composure she usually kept so carefully in place cracking at the edges. “You were unconscious, Finn. Fiona had her hands full keeping you alive, and Lily—what exactly did you want me to do? Send her instead?”
“That’s not what I’m saying—”
“Then say what you’re actually saying,” she said.
“I’m saying you don’t just walk into a situation like that alone, not when we can’t afford to lose anyone—”
“We don’t have backup!” she said. “There’s no one waiting to come if something goes wrong. It’s us. Four people and a cat in a vet clinic, and that is the entire situation.”
That stopped me.
Not because she’d said anything I didn’t already know—but because hearing it stated that plainly, in that tone, stripped the argument down to its actual shape. She wasn’t wrong. She’d never been wrong about the facts of it.
My chest rose and fell heavier than I wanted it to, frustration tangled up with something else I didn’t have a name for that made the whole thing worse.
“You could have died,” I said, my voice losing its edge.
“I didn’t.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is it?” she asked.
And there it was.
I had been circling the issue for two weeks, avoiding it.
“The point,” I said, “is that I can’t protect you if you do things like that without telling me.”
The words were out of my mouth, and I instantly knew
I’d made a mistake. Wrong thing. Wrong framing. Everything about it was wrong.
“I don’t need you to protect me,” she said.
“Yeah,” I replied, having committed to the argument. “You do.”
Her expression hardened with quiet certainty. “No. I need you to trust me. Those are not the same thing.”
That hit harder than anything else she’d said. Not because it stung—though it did—but because she was right, and I had known it even before she finished speaking.
“I think you don’t want to,” she added, her voice dropping slightly. “Trust me. I think that’s the actual problem.”
“That’s not—”
“It’s worse than not being able to,” she interrupted. “Not wanting to is a choice.”
The silence that followed was heavy. I looked away, running a hand through my hair, trying to get a grip on the frustration tightening in my chest—a frustration that stemmed not from her being wrong, but from her being undeniably right.
“I’m trying to keep everyone alive,” I said.
“So am I,” she countered. “I’ve been trying to keep everyone alive for two weeks, Finn. Including you.”
