Page 195 of Lost Then Found
“Because I’m scared,” he says. “That if I say it out loud, it’ll change the way they look at me. My family. That they’ll see me as the one who got it wrong. The one who couldn’t save him.”
That lands hard.
Not because I didn’t expect it. But because I did.
I push myself up just enough to see him better, to take his face in my hands like I can steady both of us with the touch. My thumb brushes along his jaw as I guide his eyes back to mine.
“They won’t,” I say, and my voice doesn’t shake. “They love you. You didn’t fail anyone, Boone. You did everything you could. What happened…that’s not on you. You don’t have to keep bleeding for it.”
He nods, once. Not because he fully believes me, but maybe because he wants to.
I stay close, hand still cupping his cheek, and I kiss him. Slow and sure, not asking for anything, not trying to fix it. Just letting him feel it. Letting him feel me.
When I pull back, I stay where I am. My forehead resting against his, my hand still holding him like maybe I can hold this for him, too.
“Your family loves you,” I whisper. “Hudson loves you.”
I pause, long enough to let that sink in.
And then I say the thing I haven’t said out loud. The thing that’s been sitting just under my skin for a while now.
“I love you too.”
It comes out low, but steady. The truth of it tastes a little like fear—but I mean it. Every word.
“You don’t have to carry this alone,” I tell him. “Not anymore. You can talk to me. About any of it.”
His breath stutters against my skin.
It’s out, hanging in the quiet like it’s waiting to be caught. My heart lodges itself in my throat because I realize, even as I say it, what I’vereallysaid. I haven’t told him those words since I was eighteen, since he was standing in the doorway of my life with one foot already out, the engine running, the future pulling him away from this town—away from me.
Love is funny like that.
It doesn’t always leave when you tell it to. It doesn’t pack up neatly when someone walks away or vanish just because it’s been years since you let yourself say the words out loud. Sometimes it stays—quiet and patient—tucked beneath the surface, waiting for a moment like this one. When everything you thought had been buried rises back up, warm and whole and undeniable.
Maybe love never fades away. Maybe it just waits for you to come home to it.
I stare at Boone, his eyes fixed on me like he’s trying to memorize this version of me—the one brave enough to say what I’ve held back for so long.And I think about how maybe love isn’t this sweeping, cinematic thing.
Maybe it’s not loud or all-consuming or perfect.
Maybe love was a boy with dirt on his knees and sunshine in his smile, pressing yellow daisies into my palm. Stems crooked, petals bruised from being held too tight—but he always gave them to me like they were priceless. Like I was.
And I was too young to know that kind of offering was everything.
Maybe it was the red popsicle—the cherry one he always handed over without a word. He always insisted that grape was fine. Swore he didn’t care. We’d sit barefoot on the curb, sticky fingers, scraped shins, talking about nothing and everything, like time wasn’t real.
I didn’t find out until years later he hated grape popsicles.
Maybe love was the way he waited for me at the fence line after dinner, backlit by a sky thick with fireflies, an old quilt spread beneath us. He’d point to the clouds and spin stories out of thin air—just to make me laugh. Just to keep me close.
And maybe love still looks like that. Just with older hands. Longer shadows.
Still tender.
Still true.
Just…grown up.
