On the island, everything had boundaries. You could see the edges of things. Weather came from somewhere. Danger had a shape. You could face it.
This doesn’t. It has no edge. No source. It’s just… everywhere.
“They’rewatchingus?”
This feels different from what Grandad was talking about—bigger somehow—and harder to contain.
“Yeah. Our story’s everywhere.”
Fourteen years with no one else. No audience. Everything we were belonged only to us.
And now… we’re something else. Something people think they have a right to know about. To watch. To talk about.
I think about what that means. Living like that. Being seen from angles I can’t control.
“I don’t want any of this.”
I just want to be with my husband. Freely. Without cameras. Without strangers watching us like we belong to them.
“I want to go home, Dane. To our house.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
“Tomorrow?”
“First thing in the morning, babe.”
It settles the way it always does when we land in the same place at the same time.
He climbs into bed beside me, and I move with him automatically, fitting close. His arm comes around me, my head settling against his shoulder.
The world is still out there—the noise, the people, all of it—but it feels distant from here.
Tomorrow, we go home.
Chapter 28
Dane Gallagher
This doesn’t feel real.
I stand at the front door, Charlotte beside me, and we’re both looking at the house. It seems bigger than I remember. Or maybe I’ve just spent fourteen years getting used to whatever shelter we could build ourselves.
The garden’s been kept up—trimmed, watered. Someone’s been looking after it. The cream stone hasn’t changed. I notice the color straight away, still as clean as the day we left.
I push the key into the lock and open the door.
The smell hits first—stuffy but clean. A house that’s been cared for without being lived in. Not dusty. Not abandoned.
Just waiting for our return.
I step inside, and Charlotte follows.
“We’re home.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
It takes a moment to sink in.
