Chapter 8:

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Thane came back from the forward cabin when he saw the phone was off. He sat across from me and waited.

“He said something true, at the end,” I said. “That is the strange part.”

“I was going to say — at least he finally told you the truth.” He stopped himself. “Which is technically correct and completely useless as a thing to say.”

“Very useless.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He leaned back. “I’m better at logistics than the other kind of thing. I’m working on it.”

It was more honest than I expected, and I preferred it to a well-chosen response. We sat quietly while the sky outside turned pale and wide.

I had spent two years in Highcrest telling myself the arranged marriage was the problem — that leaving was principled, not just fear. That was partly true. But I had also decided, without asking anyone, that Thane would want to keep me in one place. His mother did not work; I had drawn a line from that to a whole future and closed the door on it.

“The clinic,” I said. “After we marry — I want to keep it going. I wasn’t planning to give it up.”

He looked at me the way someone looks when they cannot quite place what they have heard. “Why would you give it up?”

“Your mother doesn’t work. I assumed the family expected—”

𝗬𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝖽а𝗂𝘭𝘺 𝗱o𝗌е o𝘧 ո𝗈𝗏𝗲𝗅𝘴 𝗈𝗇 ga𝗹ոovels.𝘤𝗼𝘮

“My mother doesn’t work because she finds it exhausting and does not need the money. That is her preference.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Is that why you went to Highcrest? You thought I’d want you at home?”

“Partly.”

“You could have asked me.” He said it without accusation, which was almost worse. “I would have told you — open as many clinics as you want. The only thing I actually wanted was you nearby. That is the whole condition.”

The plainness of it settled something in the room. Then I asked the question I had been carrying since we took off.

“Why me, specifically. There were other options for someone in your position.”

He thought about it long enough that I almost took the question back.

“Do you remember the Calloway estate? Summer party, maybe twenty years ago. I was nine.”

“Vaguely.”

“Some older kids found me alone near the stables. My family didn’t have the standing it has now, and I was small. I looked like someone it was safe to be awful to.” He said it without fuss. “You walked over with two friends. You told them to leave me alone. When they didn’t move, you stepped in front of me.”

I had the shape of the memory now. Afternoon light. A fence. Boys with nothing better to do.

“You did not know me,” Thane said. “I was just some kid with no particular claim on your attention.” A small shrug. “I paid attention after that. That is the whole story.”

I did not know what to say. Not because the story was wrong — it was right in every detail — but because of the scale of it. Twenty years of quiet attention on one side, and on mine a long detour through a man who had loved me as a substitute. The imbalance of it sat in the cabin with us.

Thane did not push for a response. He just left the silence there, which was the right thing, even if comfortable was not quite the word for it.

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