CHAPTER 103

CHAPTER 103
"Put it down, Mack."
Tony's low rumble rose behind me, even and low, as I stood at the window with the camera to my eye, lens half-raised. The sun streamed through the curtains of the wooden cabin, making gold stripes on the unmade sheets we hadn't bothered to change after last night. He was a welted, shoeless, shirtless expanse of skin, nothing but the navy drawstring pants he'd probably grabbed when I wasn't paying attention.

I didn't turn. I just held the viewfinder up to my eye, the arc of hills outside the window precisely framed.

"I'm not photographing you," I said.

"You don't have to," he said, voice softer now. "But you're still hiding."

I lowered the camera slowly, the weight of it suddenly oppressive. It wasn't even powered on.

"I'm not hiding. I'm. archiving."

He laughed, a single inhalation. I heard him shift across the room until I sensed the heat of his chest at my back. His fingers swept across my wrist, releasing the camera from me with a gentleness that rigidified my spine.

"This," he set the camera on the table near us, "is the one location on Earth where you don't have to demonstrate that you're alive."

His breath landed on my neck, slow and warm. I hated how fast my body responded.

"I don't show I exist. I set the world into place. That isn't the same."

He moved around me until we were face-to-face, eyes level to level. I recalled how small I wasn't until he looked down like that—like all the walls between us were already reduced to ashes and he was standing amidst them, unmoved.

"I think you're afraid," he said. "That if you stop taking photographs, nobody will even remember you were here."

I swallowed. He was right. That was what made me want to yell.

"I'm not afraid," I lied.

Tony examined me in that too-knowing way he had, and drew his knuckle down my cheek.

"I've been watching you," he said softly, "even when you weren't holding your lens. You feel things so loudly, Mackenzie. It's okay to just be noticed."

I blinked over and over again, looking away because the weight of being noticed—really noticed—by him was something the camera never was.

The cabin was quiet apart from the hum of bees in the yard and the far-off whine of wind on wood. No automobiles. No net. No eyes.

We had escaped.

Tony's fingers curled around mine. His thumb smoothed against the back of my knuckles as if committing something fragile to memory.

This was my mom's place," he breathed, quietly. "She'd bring me here when it was all too loud. No phones. No video games. Just." He looked around, his eyes glazing over with something I never saw in him before: reverence. "Silence that wasn't punishment."

I stepped closer to him, though I swore I wouldn't. That's how it always began—small steps until I drowned again.

"Why did you bring me here?

He smiled weakly. "Because you're loud on the inside, too."

My chest ached.

He looked away, then back. "And because when I realized I wanted to keep you, I needed to know it wasn't because of the craziness. I wanted quiet with you, too."

I had not cried since I was sixteen. Not even when Dad died. But in that moment, I felt something awaken in me that was about nothing at all to sorrow—and everything to sorrow. Sorrow for the old me. Sorrow for the us that started as bloody headlines and security updates. Sorrow for the girl who used to believe that love was something that needed to be earned in terms of guilt and survival.

"I don't know how to be quiet," I gasped.

Tony leaned until his forehead lightly pressed mine. "Then let me show you."

The kiss wasn't frantic. It wasn't flame the way it was with us. It was capitulation. Promise and apology tangled into one breathless moment.

When he pulled me towards the bed, I followed him.

And there weren't any pictures.

No poses.

No careful cropping of what the world will see.

Only flesh on flesh, truth on truth, and a thousand silent words imprisoned in the rhythm of our silence.

\---

Later, when the sky had gone dusk and we were knotted in sheets, I caught Tony gazing at me.

"You're different here," I said.

"So are you."

I propped my chin on my hand. "What do we do when we go back?"

He sighed. "You'll take your camera again. I'll restore the mask. The world will start to spin."

"Will we spin too?"

He looked at me. "Only if we want to."

The straightforwardness in his voice pierced the tranquility.

"You still have to fix your reputation?" I asked.

Tony didn't answer right away. He looked instead out the window, where the sky had turned dark as spilled ink.

"No," he finally said. "I need to fix myself."

My throat tightened. "Because of me?"

"Not only because of you. But. partly. You broke the mirror, Mackenzie." He turned to face me again. "And I hated you for it. But I hated what I saw more."

I closed my eyes. Guilt still roiled inside me, but it was not as sharp as it had been before. Not here. Not now.

When I opened them again, he was still staring.

"You don't have to be who you are," he told me. "But you don't have to be your father's shadow, either."

That made my breath catch.

"Don't you dare drag him in here."
"I didn't mean it that way. I mean it like somebody who knows what it's like to be tormented by the men we're born of."

He put his hand on my cheek, brushing a hair out of place.

"Don't have to inherit the legacy, Mack. Just inherit you. That's enough."

The room went silent again. That quiet, safe silence that wasn't a punishment at all.

I curled around his side, putting my ear over his heart. It pumped loud against my cheek.

I didn't say "I love you."

I didn't have to.

Because for the very first time, the filters weren't there.

No flash.

No need to take evidence.

This was not a moment for the world.

It was ours.

And that… was enough more than.