Page 97 of The Grumpy Defenseman
When she opened them, she looked at me.
“Yes.”
No defense.
No speech.
The answer landed harder because it was plain.
I nodded once.
“That matters to me.”
“It should.”
“I am not asking you to stop seeing me.”
Her face shifted, quick and small, like she had expected a different sentence and was trying not to show how badly.
“I don’t think I could,” she said.
“I know.”
I turned toward her fully.
“You see things before people are ready. That is part of why you are good. But seeing does not make something yours.”
Her throat moved.
“I know.”
“I need more than that.”
She nodded. “Tell me.”
The door opened.
I had spent years waiting for other people to guess what I needed, then blaming them when they got it wrong. It had been easier that way. Safer. If I never said the thing out loud, nobody could refuse it directly.
That had stopped working.
“If you catch something like that again, you tell me,” I said. “Before it sits in a folder. Before you decide whether it is art or evidence. You tell me.”
“Yes.”
“And if I say no, it dies there.”
Her eyes held mine.
“Yes.”
“I do not own your eye, and I do not get to control your work.” I paused until the words felt exact. “But if the subject is my private life, my pain, or a version of me I did not agree to give, I get a say.”
She took that in without flinching.
“You do.”
I waited.
