My Ex Threw Me Away, Now He's Bleeding for Me novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Unlatched

Gideon's POV

Nell texted me at five-forty on Tuesday morning.

She's on Mill Road. Won't let me stay. If you're going, go.

I went.

Mill Road runs past the quarry for two miles with no streetlights and a guardrail on the drop side.

I found her sitting on the rail at the bend where the shoulder widens, with her bad leg stretched out in front of her and the first light coming gray across the water.

She heard the truck door and didn't turn around.

I stopped ten feet away.

"I'm not here to ask for anything," I said.

"Then why are you here?"

"Because Nell said you were alone out here, and I'd rather you were angry at me with someone nearby."

She almost laughed.

It came out as a breath.

"Sit if you want," she said. "Not close."

I sat on the gravel with my back against the truck tire.

For a while neither of us talked.

I have photographed floods, a bridge collapse and a hundred other people's worst days, and I took one rule from all of them.

You don't step into the frame.

You make the picture, and the picture does the helping later, in somebody else's hands.

I had told myself that was ethics.

"I want to say it once without you asking," I said. "I saw you go down on that lawn. I saw Paige take the leg. I knew it was wrong by the second frame, and I kept shooting for four minutes anyway, because that's what I do when I'm afraid of making it worse."

"Afraid of what?"

"Of being the guy who walks into a student art piece and ruins it. That's the stupid reason. The real one is that I'm better at watching than at standing next to people. I've been that way a long time."

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