The small crowd had already gathered at the gate, all of them watching the car.
My heart was hamring.
I'd faced hundreds of n with guns pointed at and felt less than this. I didn't have a na for what was moving through my chest anger, relief, sothing dangerously close to fear. All of it tangled together.
Clentine stood in front of , smiling like she hadn't just crossed through a warzone to get here. Baseball cap, twin ponytails, completely unaware of how close I was to losing it.
I covered the distance in three steps and started checking her over arms, hands, the side of her neck.
"Ahahahaa... Max, stop, I'm okay! You're tickling —"
I stepped back.
No injuries. I let out a breath I'd been holding since I saw her face.
Then the anger caught up.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I looked at her hard. "I told you to stay at the base."
The smile faded.
"I was worried. I tried to reach you for three weeks, and you weren't answering."
"That doesn't an you co out here looking for ." My voice rose, and I let it. "Do you have any idea... what if sothing happened to you on the way? What then?"
She gripped the front of her shirt. "I've told you before. I'm not a baby. I can take care of myself. I want to help."
"If you want to help, then listen when I talk and stop doing dumb shit!"
The words ca out louder than I ant.
The first ti I'd ever shouted at her.
She stared at . Tears welled up slowly, and the look on her face landed sowhere I wasn't ready for. I looked away.
That's when I registered the others standing nearby my group, and behind them, Javier, Mariana, Gabriel. Under any other circumstances, that audience would've stopped cold.
Right now I didn't care.
"Did none of you stop her?" I swept a look across all of them. "What were you thinking?"
Every single one of them looked at the ground.
My hands were shaking.
For one sharp, ugly mont, I wanted to put a bullet in each of them.
"Max."
Clentine's voice cut through it.
"It was my idea. It has nothing to do with them."
I turned back to her.
"Why?" The word ca out rough. "You know your condition. If sothing happened to you—" My throat closed around the rest of it. I tried again. "If you want to help , stay where I tell you. That's how you help ."
A tear rolled down her cheek.
Then she clenched her fist and hit in the face.
"You're such an asshole."
I didn't move.
"I ca here because I was worried about you." Her voice cracked. "Three days, Max. Three days in that car not knowing if you were alive or dead. I haven't slept. I haven't eaten. Do you have any idea what that felt like?"
More tears ca. She didn't try to stop them.
"And stop treating like I'm made of glass. I'm not so helpless girl you get to lock away sowhere safe. I've been keeping myself alive since before I t you."
Her voice shook not with weakness, but with sothing that had been held in far too long.
"You act like you're the only one carrying anything. Like you're the only one who's scared."
I had nothing to say to that.
"I am scared, Max. Every ti you leave. Every ti you're gone longer than you said you'd be, I wonder if that's the day you don't co back." She pressed a hand over her eyes, then pulled it away. "But I still let you go. Because I trust you. Why can't you trust back? Why can't you let be there for you, just once?"
That landed harder than the punch.
"I don't want to sit sowhere waiting for news. I don't want to spend every day not knowing." Her jaw tightened. "I want to be beside you. Not because I need protecting... because you matter to . There's a difference. And you don't have to do this alone anymore."
My throat felt like it was closing.
"Your mother died a long ti ago." Her voice went quieter, but it didn't spare . "That pain doesn't go away. I know. But you can't keep letting it make every decision for you."
Every word found sothing I'd buried.
"You're not the only person who's lost family. I lost mine too. We've all lost people." She stepped closer. "That doesn't give you the right to control everyone around you just because you're afraid."
A beat.
"You're so terrified of losing the people you love that you're suffocating them. You think you're protecting us." She looked at steadily. "But you're just hurting us."
The world went quiet.
"There's a difference between surviving and living, Max. One day you're going to wake up and everyone who wanted to stay will already be gone."
For the first ti since she'd appeared at that gate, I had nothing left.
My hands tightened into fists at my sides.
I had done everything. Every sleepless night, every sacrifice, every ti I'd put myself between the people I loved and whatever wanted to hurt them. And she was standing here telling I'd hurt her anyway.
Was any of it worth anything?
I didn't know. That was the worst part.
A hollow feeling opened up in my chest the sa helplessness as when my grandfather died, except this ti I couldn't bla the world. Back then, there was nothing I could have done. This ti I'd been doing everything, and it still wasn't right.
I turned and walked away.
"Max, I'm sorry... co back!"
I didn't stop. I had nothing left to give to this conversation.
"Max, where are you going?"
Footsteps behind Carol. I stopped and turned just enough to look at her.
"Leave alone."
It ca out quieter than I ant it to. She looked at my face. Whatever she found there made her step back.
"Okay."
I turned toward the trees and kept walking.
---
I don't know how long I stood at the river's edge.
Long enough that the light shifted. Long enough that the anger drained out of , leaving sothing worse behind.
I watched the water move. It didn't care. It just kept going.
Footsteps on the bank behind .
I looked over my shoulder. Mary stopped a short distance away and sat down, her eyes fixed on the river, her hands resting quietly in her lap.
"I'm sorry for trying to kill you," she said. "And thank you for saving ."
I didn't respond.
We sat in silence for a while. The kind that doesn't need to be filled.
"If you don't mind," she said eventually, "can I ask you sothing?"
I said nothing. She took that as permission.
"The girl. Clentine." She didn't look at . "What is she to you?"
The question caught off guard. I turned it over for a long mont and realized I didn't have a clean answer. Or maybe I had too many.
"Is she your girlfriend?" Mary asked. "A friend? Soone you rely on? Or sothing more than that?" A pause. "Maybe she's sothing you're trying to keep safe from the rest of the world like treasure."
I stared at her.
"I don't know," I finally admitted. "But I know I don't want to lose her. Or anybody else I care about."
That was the only answer I had.
Mary nodded slowly. "From the look of it," she said, "you're already losing her."
My fists tightened.
She ignored that and looked back at the river.
"When I had my first daughter," she said, "I loved her more than anything in the world. She was this tiny, perfect thing, and all I wanted was to keep her safe." Her voice stayed level, but there was weight underneath every word. "So I didn't let her do anything dangerous. I kept her ho. I watched everything she did. I convinced myself it was for her own good."
The water moved past us.
"When she started sneaking out and lying to , I got stricter. I was so sure I was protecting her." She paused. "In eighth grade, she failed a math test. I got angry. Said things that never should have left my mouth."
A shaky breath.
"The next morning, I felt horrible. I went to her room to apologize." Her hands tightened around her legs. "I never got the chance."
She stopped.
The silence that followed had a shape to it.
"She committed suicide."
I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.
Tears rolled down Mary's face and dropped onto her hands. She didn't wipe them away.
"I spent years telling myself I was protecting her," she whispered. "I didn't realize I was just slowly suffocating my daughter." A long pause. "Love without trust is just control. By the ti I understood that, it was already too late."
She looked at .
"I'll ask again. Who is Clentine to you?"
The question settled over , and this ti I let it.
I thought about my girlfriend, the one who'd cheated on , and how I'd locked sothing away after that. I thought about my grandfather that hole in my chest that never really healed. My mother. Lee.
Too many people I'd loved were gone.
So I'd trained. I'd read, planned, built. I'd made the Blood Community into sothing strong, worked myself to the bone to be ready for every possible threat. I'd done everything I could think of.
All to make sure I never had to feel that kind of loss again.
And standing there at the river, for the first ti, I saw it clearly.
In my obsession with protecting the people I loved, I'd forgotten how to live with them.
When was the last ti Clentine and I had spent a quiet day together, no agenda, no threat looming? I couldn't rember. When had we last gone on a long bike ride? When had we danced? When had we just been together, without worrying about tomorrow?
She had trouble sleeping without . I knew that. I'd always known it.
And I still left her alone for days. Weeks. While I fought and expanded and planned for a future I was convinced I was building for her.
I'd been so focused on protecting our future that I'd completely ignored her present.
A bitter laugh escaped .
She was carrying our child, and instead of staying with her, I kept leaving. How scared must she have been? How many nights had she lain awake wondering if I'd co back?
I rembered how she'd looked at the gate.
Smiling. Happy. Relieved... the mont she saw , she smiled.
And what had I done?
I hadn't hugged her. Hadn't kissed her. Hadn't told her I was glad she was alive.
I'd shouted at her.
I closed my eyes.
The guilt felt like sothing physical a weight pressing down on the center of my chest.
Clentine wasn't a problem to be managed. She wasn't soone I needed to shield from the world. She was a person. A person with fears and hopes and a heart that could be hurt and sohow, despite everything I'd done to protect her, I had beco the one hurting her.
For the first ti in a long while, I didn't feel like a protector.
I felt like a fool.
I looked at Mary. And for the first ti since I'd co to this river, I felt sothing loosen in my chest.
I finally had an answer.
"She's just Clentine," I said.
The words were simple. But they felt exactly right.
"A girl I love. And can't live without."
Mary smiled.
She didn't say anything else. She didn't need to.
"Thank You"
I turned around and ran.
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