"And then?"
"Then I realized being the center of someone's world means never being allowed to exist outside it." Her jaw tightens. "It happened so slowly. Little things at first. Suggestions about what I should wear, who I should spend time with. He framed it as concern. Said he just wanted to take care of me, protect me from people who didn't have my best interests at heart."
"But it wasn't concern."
"No." Her eyes find mine, and the moonlight catches the fear in them alongside something harder. "It was control. Everything was controlled. What I ate, when I slept, what I was allowed to feel about anything. And when I tried to push back, he had ways of making me understand that pushing back wasn't an option."
I don't ask what ways. The answer is written in her panic attacks, in every flinch and guarded glance she's given me since she walked through that door.
"Did he hurt you?"
The question comes out rougher than I intend. Gemma's eyes flick to my hands—balled into fists against my knees, the only thing keeping me in place.
"Not the way you're thinking." She looks away. "He never hit me. Never left bruises. But there are other ways to hurt someone. Ways that don't show on the skin."
"I know."
She turns back, studying my face. We look at each other in the darkness, and the distance between us feels thin.
"I watched you and Sarah," she says suddenly. "At cookouts, at the bar, everywhere. The way you looked at her. The way she leaned into you like you were the safest place in the world." Her voice wavers. "I wanted that so badly. And I thought I'd found it with Craig. He said all the right things about trust and communication. Made it feel like a choice I was making, not something being taken from me."
"Until it wasn't a choice anymore."
"Until it wasn't anything anymore. Until I couldn't remember who I'd been before him." She pulls in a breath. "I'm scared to trust my own judgment now. About men. About everything. I looked at Craig and saw safety, and I was so completely wrong. How do I trust myself after that?"
"You don't have to trust yourself right now." The words come slowly, carefully. "You just take it one day at a time. One decision at a time. Eventually you'll look back and realize you've been getting it right more than you thought. The trust comes after."
"Is that what you did? After Sarah?"
I've been expecting the question since she mentioned watching us. It still lands harder than I'm ready for.
"Sarah and I weren't perfect," I say. "Most people saw us from the outside, at our best. Didn't see the days she couldn't get out of bed. The days she'd look at me like she couldn't remember why she'd ever wanted to spend her life with me."
"Will—"
"She struggled with depression before she got sick, and the illness made it worse. We fought that battle together before the cancer finally won. And I'm not supposed to talk about the hard parts. I'm supposed to remember her as this shining spirit that was perfect and got taken too soon." I stare at the water because it's easier than meeting her eyes. "But she was human. Complicated. Difficult sometimes. And worth every single hard day."
Gemma is quiet for a long moment. The water laps against the pilings beneath us, and somewhere in the distance a foghorn sounds.
"Thank you," she says finally. "For telling me that. For not pretending it was all perfect."
"You were at her funeral. You saw how wrecked I was. Nothing about that was perfect."
"I remember." Her voice is soft. "I wanted to say something to you. Something that would help. But what do you say to someone who just lost everything?"
"You told me she was lucky to have been loved like that. I heard you, even if I couldn't respond."
"You remember that?"
"I remember everything about that day. Including the fact that you already looked like you were disappearing. Even then."
She flinches, just slightly. "I didn't think anyone noticed."
"I didn't. Not really. Not until you walked back through my door three weeks ago looking like a ghost of who you used to be." I turn to face her. "I should have paid attention. At the funeral, after. I should have asked why your boyfriend didn't come withyou, why you seemed so diminished. But I was drowning in my own grief, and I missed it."
"You couldn't have known."
"That's what I told Cole. Doesn't make it feel any less true."
