The small crowd had already gathered at the gate, all of them watching the car.
My heart was hammering.
I'd faced hundreds of men with guns pointed at me and felt less than this. I didn't have a name for what was moving through my chest anger, relief, something dangerously close to fear. All of it tangled together.
Clementine stood in front of me, 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 me—"
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 mean you come out here looking for me." My voice rose, and I let it. "Do you have any idea... what if something 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 came out louder than I meant.
The first time I'd ever shouted at her.
She stared at me. Tears welled up slowly, and the look on her face landed somewhere 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 me 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 moment, I wanted to put a bullet in each of them.
"Max."
Clementine's voice cut through it.
"It was my idea. It has nothing to do with them."
I turned back to her.
"Why?" The word came out rough. "You know your condition. If something happened to you—" My throat closed around the rest of it. I tried again. "If you want to help me, stay where I tell you. That's how you help me."
A tear rolled down her cheek.
Then she clenched her fist and hit me in the face.
"You're such an asshole."
I didn't move.
"I came 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 came. She didn't try to stop them.
"And stop treating me like I'm made of glass. I'm not some helpless girl you get to lock away somewhere safe. I've been keeping myself alive since before I met you."
Her voice shook not with weakness, but with something 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 time you leave. Every time you're gone longer than you said you'd be, I wonder if that's the day you don't come 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 me back? Why can't you let me be there for you, just once?"
That landed harder than the punch.
"I don't want to sit somewhere 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 me. 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 time ago." Her voice went quieter, but it didn't spare me. "That pain doesn't go away. I know. But you can't keep letting it make every decision for you."
Every word found something 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 me 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 time 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 time I'd put myself between the people I loved and whatever wanted to hurt them. And she was standing here telling me 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 same helplessness as when my grandfather died, except this time I couldn't blame the world. Back then, there was nothing I could have done. This time I'd been doing everything, and it still wasn't right.
I turned and walked away.
"Max, I'm sorry... come back!"
I didn't stop. I had nothing left to give to this conversation.
"Max, where are you going?"
Footsteps behind me Carol. I stopped and turned just enough to look at her.
"Leave me alone."
It came out quieter than I meant 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 me, leaving something worse behind.
I watched the water move. It didn't care. It just kept going.
Footsteps on the bank behind me.
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 me."
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 something?"
I said nothing. She took that as permission.
"The girl. Clementine." She didn't look at me. "What is she to you?"
The question caught me off guard. I turned it over for a long moment and realized I didn't have a clean answer. Or maybe I had too many.
"Is she your girlfriend?" Mary asked. "A friend? Someone you rely on? Or something more than that?" A pause. "Maybe she's something 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 home. 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 me, 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 time I understood that, it was already too late."
She looked at me.
"I'll ask again. Who is Clementine to you?"
The question settled over me, and this time I let it.
I thought about my girlfriend, the one who'd cheated on me, and how I'd locked something 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 something 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 time, 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 time Clementine and I had spent a quiet day together, no agenda, no threat looming? I couldn't remember. 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 me. 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 me.
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 come back?
I remembered how she'd looked at the gate.
Smiling. Happy. Relieved... the moment she saw me, 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 something physical a weight pressing down on the center of my chest.
Clementine wasn't a problem to be managed. She wasn't someone 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 somehow, despite everything I'd done to protect her, I had become the one hurting her.
For the first time in a long while, I didn't feel like a protector.
I felt like a fool.
I looked at Mary. And for the first time since I'd come to this river, I felt something loosen in my chest.
I finally had an answer.
"She's just Clementine," 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.