"You," Grace breathed, the words slipping out before she could stop them.
Inside them hid a thousand tangled feelings—unseen, intricate, impossible to name.
At last she understood why people had once torn Oakley apart.
Most hearts weren't built like Oakley's. Most cores weren't that steady. People practiced suspicion the way some practiced scales—diligently, relentlessly. They couldn't admit that a thing pure and generous might exist in daylight; it would make their own pettiness too stark by comparison. So they dragged Oakley down and tallied her flaws, as if doing so could set the world right.
The strangest part: most people are searching for unconditional love, and yet most are incapable of offering it. Oakley could. Not only could she—she wielded it with an ease that seemed almost effortless.
What a rare gift. For those who can't fathom it but long for it anyway, how could it not provoke envy?
And now Grace also understood why Oakley "never learned her lesson." Even when flayed to the bone, she somehow grew new skin and forgot the pain. She went on, childlike, treating the world as a sprawling carnival to wander and touch.
"Truly…" Grace murmured.
"Mm?" Oakley waited, expectant.
Grace only shook her head and held her close, breathing in that unplaceable, beautiful scent.
She had often wondered what it meant to know the world without becoming worldly. Then she met Oakley. She didn't want to instruct Oakley, to correct her, to scold.
Because this—this lightness—was rare.
She couldn't bear to bruise it. She only wanted to hold her. At least for now.
But then Grace added, quietly, "Next time you're choosing friends, when you run into the kind of people you talked about… if you're unsure what to do, ask me."
"Ask you?" Oakley lifted her head.
"Yes," Grace said. "You know, out there, most people are like me. I have a baseline. Many don't."
She thought for a moment, then went on, "Even though you read people's needs well, your way of seeing is… too relative. Too many variables. Any behavior can be explained into something forgivable, something curable. That makes your judgment vulnerable to error."
"So when it comes to who can be saved and who cannot, who's truly selfish… I'll always see it more clearly than you."
In Grace's mind, human nature tended toward the dark. No stack of books had shaken that conviction. Until Oakley. Then the verdict softened—human nature was dark in ninety-nine percent of cases.
This was why she never posted on social platforms. She had no appetite for too many people. And posting, after all, was merely another way to let others enter your life uninvited.
Sharing anything meant emptying yourself outward. Even in everyday conversation, when it brushed against what mattered, she deflected with jokes.
Most of the time, she didn't want too many people to know the real her. She didn't want to display her soft spots to visible or invisible enemies. That was too hard for her. Too dangerous. She never knew when those fault lines might be grabbed and used.
So yes, she admired Oakley—who could be unguarded anywhere.
Her belief in human frailty also explained why, at work, she never wasted effort on the undeserving.
As for why she kept giving in relationships and with her adoptive parents even when the future looked blank—she chose, clear-eyed, to fall.
Maybe she did it so she wouldn't drown in pessimism—some quiet proof that the world wasn't quite so rotten. She forgave and forgave and forgave. And of course that became her softest point of failure.
It was also why she had no wish to build another intimate life, to settle into that tandem routine. She handled it poorly and feared the chaos, the humiliation of unraveling.
Some say a good partner wouldn't let that happen—that she simply hadn't met the right person yet. Someone patient, empathic, someone who could lead her through.
Perhaps.
But the truth? She resisted that story. If she truly was difficult, on what ground could she ask someone to contort themselves for her?
What was she, a crowned monarch, demanding others kneel and flatter?
With that logic in place, she had curled tighter and tighter into herself.
Especially after Jessica Brooks.
Oakley heard her out, nodding a little, though her attention snagged on one phrase—Grace's "most people are like me."
Her focus was always like this—strange, endearing. When she cared for a person, every scrap of information about them became the most fascinating thing in the room.
She snorted, then laughed. "So you truly, from the bottom of your heart, believe you're ordinary?"
"Don't you?" Grace frowned.
She allowed herself brief pride for results, for things she built with her own hands. But as a person? She felt no right to be proud.
More often than not, she thought herself dirty. Petty.
"Of course not. If you don't believe me, then take this at least: to me, you're not."
Grace's mouth tilted into a smile.
After a while, Oakley added, suddenly curious, "Hey—why are you named Grace Barron?"
She loved the name. Even when she'd disliked Grace in the past, the name itself had always sounded beautiful. Unlike her own. She'd always thought her mother had been careless naming her.
The meaning was fine—lovely, even. Her parents wanted her life to be poetic. Still, Grace's name was the one that felt like play.
Grace thought a moment. "When my mother was pregnant with me, we were poor. She had nothing. My grandparents picked her apart, all the time. She regretted marrying, in a way—regretted how it trapped her, how it stripped her freedom."
She paused, then continued, "So she pinned her hope to me. She wanted me to grow up free to be myself, free to choose—like a small boat she once watched drifting downriver. No one steering it. Rising and falling on its own."
Yes. And before she was adopted, her first home hadn't been kinder. Her parents loved her. Her grandparents did not.
They disliked her mother, believed her father a fool for refusing a wealthier woman to choose her. So they disliked the child as proof of his mistake.
To them, she barely warranted kindness. She was meat that could walk and talk.
So they criticized her without mercy. One extra mouthful made her a glutton. Going outside to play meant laziness. A torn shirt was wasteful.
They never saw anything good. Over time, she stopped seeing it too.
Grace gave a rueful smile. "My mother was an idealist, wasn't she? And the ideal—freedom—was as beautiful as it was hard."
Oakley propped her chin in her hand, listening with a grave tenderness. "Yes. But she loved you."
Many parents in such circumstances would let bitterness sour into blame, turn it against the child. Not hers.
Grace nodded. "Mm."
Her life was complicated. Starved for love? Not exactly. Not starved? Not exactly. In her first family and in the next, she lived in that uneasy middle.
Not tragic. Not blessed. Suspended somewhere in between.
Oakley pressed her lips together, thinking.
After a silence, delight flickered through her eyes. She laughed. "Isn't it funny?"
"Mm?" Grace looked up at the sudden turn.
Oakley twined her fingers lightly through Grace's hair. "My last name is Ponciano. But imagine if I were the river your mother hoped you'd meet."
Grace went still.
Oakley scooted closer on her own, her voice small and bright and sweet. "Whatever you're like with others, I hope with me you can loosen a little. Be freer."
Then she nudged under Grace's chin like a puppy, looked up with wide eyes. "Honestly, my brain isn't that sharp. I'm harmless. You don't have to guard so hard against me.
"After all… Oakley Ponciano—Oakley, gone and forgetful." She giggled at her own terrible joke.
The little gesture was so guileless it disarmed Grace completely.
Oakley's mouth brushed Grace's—a swift kiss. "Enough talk. I need a shower."
By the time Grace lifted her head, Oakley had already turned, slipped from the bed, and was up on her feet.
Oakley was happy. Radiantly so.
She hadn't felt this light in ages. After the months of online cruelty, she'd been scrambled, helpless.
But now, none of it seemed to matter. Why? Was it because Grace had made her feel so good? Yes—Grace had been startlingly deft, brilliant for a first time. But it wasn't only that.
There was also this: Grace had started telling her things. Pieces of the past. Small doors cracking open.
When Oakley reached out, her fingers could almost touch the deep water.
Whatever the reason, it was wonderful.
She couldn't explain it, but she felt as if miniature wings had sprouted along her shoulder blades, as if she might lift off at any second.
Only—Grace really did belittle herself too much. She was already so gentle—gentler than anyone Oakley had ever met—yet she refused to accept it.
Meanwhile, Grace lay listening to the shower's steady hiss, staring up at the ceiling. Though the space beside her had gone empty, she reached a hand across the mattress, fingertips pressing into sheets still warm with Oakley's heat.
Her mouth curved without her noticing.