A stone fireplace dominates the far wall with a thick wooden mantel and a stack of split logs in a wrought iron basket beside it. The furniture is simple and comfortable — a deep sectional sofa in navy linen, leather armchairs, a low coffee table made from what looks like reclaimed driftwood.
The entire back wall is windows. Floor to ceiling, facing the ocean. Through the glass, the rocky coastline stretches out inboth directions, dark stone and white spray and the vast gray-green expanse of the Atlantic.
I walk to the windows and press my hand against the glass. Outside, the ocean moves and breathes and crashes, and it feels like the house is sitting at the edge of the world.
To the right is the kitchen. White cabinets with brass hardware, butcher block countertops, a deep farmhouse sink positioned directly under a window that faces the water.
A large island in the center with barstools. Copper pots hanging from a rack above the stove. The countertops are clean, and there's a bowl of fresh fruit on the island and the fridge, when I open it, is fully stocked — vegetables, proteins, eggs, butter, cream, two bottles of wine.
“Who did all this?” I ask.
“Susan. She lives in town and takes care of the place when I'm not here. Stocks the fridge, keeps the heat running, makes sure the pipes don't freeze.”
“She stocked the fridge with enough food for a week.”
“I told her I was bringing someone.” He sets our bags down. “She may have gone overboard.”
He gives me the tour. Four bedrooms upstairs, each with its own bathroom. A study with built-in bookshelves lining three walls, half-filled with books, a leather reading chair by the window.
The master bedroom has a king bed with white linen and a view of the ocean that makes me stand in the doorway and forget how to speak. There's a claw-foot tub in the master bathroom and a walk-in shower with stone tiles and a bench.
“The tub was here when I bought the place,” Logan says from behind me. “Only thing in the house that didn't need replacing.”
“I'm going to live in that tub.”
He laughs. “I figured.”
We go back downstairs, and Logan builds a fire in the living room while I curl up on the sectional and wrap myself in a cashmere blanket I found draped over one of the armchairs.
The fire catches, and the room fills with the smell of burning pine, and the warmth pushes back against the cold coming off the windows. Outside, the afternoon light is fading, and the ocean is turning from gray-green to steel.
“Walk?” Logan says.
I look at him like he’s crazy because he is if he thinks I’m walking out there. “It’s freezing out there.”
“I have jackets.”
“Okay, but it’s on you if I turn into an icicle.”
He finds me a heavy parka from a closet near the back door, and we step out onto the porch. The cold hits my face and fills my lungs. We take the stone steps down from the porch to the yard and follow a path through the grass to the rocky beach below.
The rocks are dark and slippery with spray. The waves crash against them in rhythmic sets, sending white foam across the stone. Logan takes my hand, and we walk along the shoreline, picking our way over the uneven ground, not talking at first. The sound of the ocean is so big that it fills the silence completely.
We stop at a flat rock outcropping and sit down. The stone is cold and damp beneath me. Logan puts his arm around my shoulders, and I lean into him. We look out at the water and the sky is enormous, gray, and pale, stretching in every direction.
We've been together for weeks now, but there are conversations we've been stepping around. We talk about our days. We laugh, make love, and fall asleep tangled together. But we haven't talked about the thing underneath all of it.
The breakup. We've mentioned it in pieces, but we've never sat down and opened it all the way up. I've been putting it offbecause it's easier to be happy than to dig into the wound that almost kept us apart forever.
But if we don't do it, it'll sit between us like a crack in a foundation. If we're going to build something real, we need to clear the ground first.
I take a deep breath. “When you left, I didn't just lose you. I lost everything I thought my life was going to be.” I keep my eyes on the water. “I was eighteen, and I had this picture in my head of us. You in the NHL, me going to college, and we'd figure out the distance, and we'd make it work because we loved each other.
“Our future was so clear to me.”
Logan’s arm tightens around my shoulders.
“And then your mother told me I wasn't the right kind of woman, and you left. And the picture disappeared. Like someone ripped a photograph in half.”
