"Can I tell you something," she says. "And you have to not do the thing where you go all noble and terrified about it."
"I can't promise that."
"Try." She takes a breath. "I've spent my whole life being the girl nobody chose. The fish girl. The one who smells like the docks, who gets locked in closets and laughed at and told she's not worth the trouble of looking for when her paperwork goes missing. I stopped expecting to be chosen a long time ago, Evan. I decided I'd just, be strong enough not to need it. Be tough, be prickly, hit back, never let them see it landed. And it worked. It got me here." Her voice goes soft, and unguarded, and it's costing her, I can see it costing her the way honesty always costs her. "And then you looked at my face on a boat when I was standing there drippin
