Page 86 of The Grumpy Defenseman
“No.”
“Would you have?”
That one landed.
His volume did not change.
Because he did not.
Because that was the actual wound.
I closed my eyes for one second.
When I opened them, he was still there. Waiting. Not rescuing me from the answer.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The honesty of it went through him visibly this time. Not huge. Just a brief, clean recoil in the muscles around his mouth, like some part of his body had heard the blow before the rest of him caught up.
And that was the damage.
The damage.
“I hate that answer,” he said.
“I know.”
“You should.”
“I know that too.”
He looked down at the floor between us. Then back at me.
“I’m not asking if you meant to leak it,” he said. “I understand the difference.”
His voice was so calm now it was almost unbearable.
“I’m asking why you held onto a version of me you knew wasn’t yours.”
“Because I wanted it,” I said. “And I told myself holding it wasn’t the same as using it.”
He exhaled once through his nose. Not a laugh. Not close.
“That’s a hell of a photographer’s answer.”
“I know.”
His eyes flicked briefly to my face, and I saw it then.
Not rage. Not even betrayal in the simple version of the word. Something more complicated and worse: the hurt of a man who understood the exact shape of my temptation because the image itself had been that honest.
He went still again.
Then: “Did Sandra bring you to me, or did you come on your own?”
“Icame on my own.”
“Before Walsh can use it?”
