CHAPTER 98

CHAPTER 98
"You're still you," he told me.

The voice flowed over the low hum of the gallery, smooth as jazz that's old, a little rougher than I'd remembered.

I turned around. He hadn't altered. Not sufficiently.

"Only sharper," I told him, observing the edges of his mouth move into something between a smirk and a recollection.

The gallery was quiet, late at night—only a handful of individuals lingered, having wine from plastic glasses and speaking softly by inflated prints of their students' art. Our youth mentorship program had made it through the storms, the turmoil, the trauma—hell, even us.

And so we were here.

Tony "Anaga" Zacks, the boy who used to intimidate me with wanting, stood beside me like years hadn't sliced off our past.

"You walked past me twice," he murmured, his gaze still on the photographs, but I could tell he was staring at me. "Didn't know if it was on purpose or just. classic Mackenzie."

I smiled halfway. "Perhaps I did not wish to be the first to speak."

"I was going to greet you," he said. "But you looked. settled."

Settled. That was a new word for me. I'd spent years being angry, then numb, then busy. Peace was something I had to crawl through guilt to find.

And yet—he noticed.

"So did you," I said. "You look. " I studied the lines of his face—older, more solid, no longer etched with fury. "Like you're not fighting anymore."

He smiled. Softly. "Still got some foes, just not in my own head."

I wasn't prepared for how that line was going to slice me up.

There had been a time when every other second spent in his presence was like walking the edge of something sharp. There were emotional bruises—we never acknowledged giving each other. But now, there was only space.

Breathable space.

"Ever think we'd wind up like this?" I said, bouncing from foot to foot.

"At a children's photography ball?" he raised an eyebrow. "Not remotely."

I elbowed his arm with my own.

"You get my point."

Tony didn't say anything for a moment. His eyes went to a framed photograph on the wall on the other side of the room—one of a girl, around twelve, hands gripping an antique camera as if it were a magic wand.

That was us," he said.

I nodded. "In a sense."

We walked. Slowly. Side by side. Our footsteps falling in the type of rhythm once took months of turmoil to discover.

He paused before one of the portraits I'd snapped for the mentorship launch—black and white, a candid of a boy smiling with his entire face.

"I recognize that one," he said. "You put it up."

"Didn't know you still followed."

He shrugged. "Didn't know I ever stopped."

There was silence, but not the old silence. Not one laced with unspoken apologies or tension so thick you could gag on it. This was a nice silence.

"Wells texted me when the program got picked up by Queens Arrows," he said after a moment. "Said, 'Looks like she's finally become the queen of her own damn shots.'"

Lovely. I rolled my eyes. "He still calls me Queen Blame, doesn't he?"

Tony laughed. "Only when he's drunk."

I snorted. "Some things just never do."

We reached the end of the exhibit. The lights dimmed here. The final photograph—mine. A street scene, blurring motion, a boy holding his mother's hand through the middle of traffic. It was the only one I entered in my own name.

"You always had an eye for what's in-between," he whispered.

I gazed at him. "I believed you hated my lens."

He stood facing me full-on. "I hated what it uncovered about me."

His words sank into the bone of me, slow and quiet.

I was furious," he continued. "For a long good time. And it was so easy to dump all that fury on you. But that evening? That instant you snapped? You didn't ruin me, Mackenzie. I just hadn't yet figured out who I was without the noise."

I swallowed. My chest hurt in that old, familiar way—when emotions pounded on the door before I could decide if I was going to let them in.

I blamed myself, too," I admitted. "For years. Even when I was being cheered on, I felt like I'd stolen something I couldn't give back."

His gaze softened. "We were kids. Trying to survive in a world that hungered for blood and headlines."

"And we delivered," I whispered.

He looked at me with something more than nostalgia. Something akin to sorrow, but cleaner.

"I'm proud of you," he told me.

I hadn't known how much I'd needed to hear those words until they showed up.

"You too," I struggled to say, my voice choking a little. "You're walking different now."

He smiled. "I stopped trying to battle ghosts."

And God, didn't that apply to both of us?

We stood there for a minute. Just standing. No words, no show. Just a quiet presence where there used to be wildfire.

"You still toss that camera around like it's your sword," he taunted.

"Old habits."

"Do you ever get the chaos?" he joked, half-teasing.

I shrugged. "Not the pain. But the clarity? Yeah. When all hurt, at least you knew what was real."

Tony nodded. "Hurt is honest like that."

"But healing is quiet," I told him.

He leaned forward again, this time closer. "And we're better now. Yeah?"

I didn't leap to answer. Because the thing was we were. Not unbroken. Not perfect. But better.

"Yeah," I said. "We are."

Outside, city hummed. Spring air. Late dusk.

We walked out of the gallery together, silent accord in each step.