“Thank you,” I said, and my voice cracked a little around the sudden tightness in my throat.
I stepped away from the podium, and back to my seat in the second row of folding chairs. The next person stood up and moved to the podium to introduce themselves and tell their story. As much as I wanted to crane my neck and peer over my shoulder to see Dawson’s reaction, part of my commitment to the group was listening to everyone else’s story with as much attention as they’d given mine. So I sat, and listened, and bore witness to the pain of the others that were on this same journey, wherever in the journey they were.
The meeting adjourned after about an hour, and we all stood to shake hands and linger around the coffee and the cookies. I cast my gaze around the room, but Dawson was nowhere to be seen.
My heart sank. Maybe it’d been too much—my story, and the stories of others. The first meeting could be intimidating and overwhelming. If he’d bolted to process in private, I couldn’t blame him, but I also couldn’t deny that I wished he hadn’t.
I said my goodbyes to the familiar faces in the meeting, then tugged my leather jacket on and walked out of the basement into the chilly night air. Despite the crowded meeting, the church parking lot looked sparse.
But there was a familiar truck parked under a streetlamp, and a familiar figure leaning against it, wrapped up in a heavy brown work coat with one boot propped against the wheel well.
My breath caught in my chest. So he hadn’t left. And if he was still here, he must be waiting.
Waiting for me.
I approached slowly, with measured movements. Didn’t want to surprise him, like he was a spooked animal. Dawson saw me coming, then stood up straight and shoved his hands into his pockets, chin ducked slightly.
“Hey.” I leaned against the cab of the truck, just to the side of him, so our shoulders were nearly touching, but not quite. “You waited.”
“Yeah.” The yellow light of the streetlamp cast Dawson’s face in chiaroscuro, only dramatizing the bags under his eyes and the pain in his expression. “Is that okay?”
“Course it is,” I said.
“Jesus, Nix,” Dawson said, then his shoulders collapsed in a little as he scrubbed his hands over his face. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”
I pressed my lips together, biting back my immediate impulse to forgive him. Because I knew I needed him to be a little more specific—I needed to know if he knew what he was really apologizing for.
“I’m sorry for fucking things up at Tempest, and with the club,” Dawson continued. “Brennan told me to come here and I—I know I have a problem. With booze.”
Relief—and hope—flared in my chest. “Yeah?” I asked, gently encouraging. “I want to forgive you, you know, but it’s like I said. You have to be addressing this. Getting help.”
“I know,” Dawson said.
He looked younger, smaller, curled in on himself like this. Even though he was older than me, I wanted to wrap him in my arms and hold him close and tell him everything would be okay. But I had to know for sure, first, that he was serious about this.
“I want to get better,” Dawson said. “I’m—I’m going to get better. And get help with this.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath. My heart clenched, and I wrapped my arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. Dawson swallowed hard as he leaned heavily against me.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me right now,” he said. “I know I fucked things up with you, and the club, and Brennan. But I just wanted you to know that I’m taking it seriously. I’m really going to change.”
“I believe you,” I said. This was the hard part, but I knew I had to say this, too. “And you’re right. You did fuck things up. It’s not an overnight fix.”
“I know,” he said.
“But I want to trust you again.” I blinked hard, willing away the tears threatening hot behind my eyes. “I really want to. So you’ll have to earn it, and we’ll take it one day at a time, okay?”
I had to rely on Dawson for this part. I had to see him start to change, before I could start to trust him again. It was all on him, now.
“I hear you,” Dawson said. “That’s—that’s all I want. One last chance.”
“Hey,” I said gently, and Dawson looked up. Our faces were so close together that his warm breath washed over my face as his gaze flickered down to my lips. I leaned forward and kissed him, brief and chaste, and something inside me settled. “You may need to build my trust again, but I forgive you.”
Dawson shivered, but didn’t try to deepen the kiss.
“You’re getting help,” I said. “That’s all I wanted.”
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” Dawson said shakily.
“No one ever deserves forgiveness,” I said. “But you have mine. It’s part of the journey.”
Dawson nodded, looking a little stunned and exhausted.
“It’s cold,” I said. “Come on, let’s go to your place.”
He blinked at me, looking somehow more stunned.
“You don’t need to be driving home right now,” I said. “You look like you’re about to fall over where you stand. Come on, I’ll drive your truck back to your place and come get mine tomorrow.”
And he didn’t need to be alone right now. He looked so lost and vulnerable—I couldn’t walk this path for him, but I could help him through tonight.
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d love that.”
I took the keys from his hand and slid into the driver’s side.
“I’m sorry about Sienna, too,” Dawson said as he leaned back in the passenger seat. “I’m sorry for prying so much about her.”
“Thanks,” I said as I pulled the truck out of the parking lot. “I miss her a lot. And I’m glad you know her story now, too.” I threw him a small smile. “Though I wish it had been in a different setting. A more private one.”
“You’ll have to tell me more about her,” Dawson said. “Sometime. If you want.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. I imagined another date at the lake with Dawson: sprawled out on a blanket in front of the still water, hands tangled together as we gazed up at the stars, and I tell him about how Sienna wanted to study dance or maybe library science in college, how she loved horror movies and Korean food, how she’d dreamed of spending a year abroad in Australia. I wanted to share more than just the story of our descent and her death. I wanted to share with Dawson all the things that had brought us together, too: her light, her playfulness, the way she saw past her family’s preconceived notions right into my heart. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
I didn’t want to lose anyone else to addiction—either because they were actually lost to it, like Sienna had been, or because the addiction pushed me away. I wasn’t willing to give up on Dawson now, not when he’d turned this corner and shown me he wanted to climb out of the pit. In my anger I’d told him he couldn’t get his help from me, but he was reaching out, and I wasn’t going to pull my hand away.
We drove in easy silence, and I parked outside Dawson’s house and walked him up to the front door.