“Fine,” I say.
Hadley throws both hands up in victory. “See? Easy.”
Nothing about this feels easy. Still, I don’t take it back. Holt works a shift the following morning, so it will be good to put some distance between us. And Nolan, who I still haven’t fully figured out, though I know there’s something he’s not saying. Not an ulterior motive exactly. More like a worry he’s carrying too tightly and refusing to hand over. Which might be worse, because Nolan has always had a habit of protecting people by standing directly in their way.
I wake early out of habit and lie still for a few seconds, listening. No movement in the hall. No low scrape of boots by the door. No quiet presence in the kitchen making coffee stronger than it needs to be.
Just the house. Just me.
Rook stretches at the foot of the bed and huffs when I sit up, as if even he thinks this change in routine is unnecessary.
“Apparently, we miss structure now,” I mutter.
He blinks once and thumps his tail against the comforter. A friendly voice calls out from somewhere in the hall as the slam of a door follows.
By the time I reach the kitchen, Claire is already pouring coffee into a travel mug while looking over some handwritten list on the counter. She glances up when I step in, like she had planned this all along.
“He left twenty minutes ago,” she says. “Thought I’d come see if you needed anything.”
I head to the coffee pot like I wasn’t listening for that exact answer before she gave it.
“I didn’t ask.”
“No,” she agrees. “You didn’t.”
Her tone says plenty anyway.
I pour my coffee and pretend not to notice the second mug missing from the dish rack. Pretend not to imagine the shape of his morning—boots laced at the door, turnout bag slung over one shoulder, the quiet focus that settles over him when work pulls the rest of him into line.
It takes me a second to notice it. The kitchen looks the same. The table. The chair pulled slightly off-center.
Everything exactly where it should be— except the vase. I step closer. Wildflowers. Not arranged. Not precise. Just gathered.
The same ones I pointed out the other day without thinking. Half distracted. Talking about how they used to grow near my dad’s place.
I didn’t think he was listening. Or maybe I did. I just didn’t think he’d remember.
My fingers brush one of the petals lightly. There’s no note. No comment. Just…there. Like it’s always been.
Dangerous. That’s what all of this is. Dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with fire.
Hadley arrives not long after, all delight and bright purpose, sweeping into the house with Bailey and Lila behind her and Ivy a beat later, carrying a pastry box in one hand and sunglasses tucked on top of her head.
Rook runs straight for Ivy first. I squash away the instant jealousy I feel at that. She crouches without hesitation, letting him sniff her hand before scratching gently under his chin.
“There’s my favorite tiny man.”
“He is absolutely not tiny,” I say.
“Emotionally,” Bailey says, breezing past with an iced coffee the size of her head. “He’s a menace.”
The next hour passes in a blur of movement and chatter, and the kind of female energy I’m still not used to being a part of without having to perform. Bailey talks me into going to the bookstore even after I insist I should be at the inn. Lila ignores that excuse by asking if I’ve eaten breakfast with the kind of voice that only works if people care what your answer is. Hadley makes herself useful by grabbing Rook’s leash before I can argue and declaring that “fresh air counts as emotional regulation.”
The bookstore—Bailey’s bookstore—is exactly what I should’ve expected and somehow more than that anyway. Warm wood floors. Shelves packed to the ceiling. A soft bell over the door. The whole place smells faintly of paper, coffee, and sea air that seeps in every time someone enters. And it’s in a freaking lighthouse. I’ve never seen anything more iconic.
I should feel out of place.
Instead, sitting in the reading nook with a coffee in one hand while Hadley sprawls on the floor beside Rook and tells me stories about Holt at sixteen, I feel something else. Like I’m being folded into the shape of a life I never asked for.
