My cottage welcomed me with its usual orderly silence. I kicked off my shoes and collapsed onto the sofa without bothering to turn on the lights. The streetlamp outside cast long shadows across the hardwood floors. I couldn’t do my usual ritual tonight. The beer, the music, the comfortable solitude. Nothing was comfortable. I just sat in the dark,replaying the dinner in painful detail. The way they’d engaged with Tessa’s world and glossed over mine. The exhausting labor she’d undertaken just to make them see me as worthy of basic respect.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table, the screen lighting up. I almost ignored it, but something compelled me to reach for it.
Tessa: I’m laying down the law with them first thing in the morning. I need you to come over at 9. They owe you an apology, and I’m going to make sure you get one.
My thumb hoveredover the keyboard, and I typed a response.
Braden: You don’t have to do that.
I immediately deleted it.Too weak.
Braden: Are you sure?
I deleted that too.Too questioning. Too damn weak. Her words were a shield, and my instinct was to push it away, to prove I didn’t need protecting.
A second text followed before I could reply.
Tessa: What they did tonight was unacceptable. I won’t let them treat you that way.
The raw loyaltyin her words cut through my pride. The despair that had been threatening to consume me shifted, making room for something else. Admiration. Relief. A tentative, dangerous hope that maybe we could navigate this. This was what partnership looked like.
I finally found the right response.
Braden: I’ll be there.
Her reply came back immediately.
Tessa: Thank you for tonight. For not hiding. For being exactly who you are.
My chest ached.I wanted to be that man.
Braden: Thank youfor seeing it.
Tessa: Of course I do. See you tomorrow.
I setthe phone down and leaned back against the couch, closing my eyes. The anger at her parents still simmered. But knowing Tessa was willing to draw a line, to demand better from them on my behalf, restored something the dinner had taken from me.
My faith in us.
Images hit me unbidden—Tessa at eighteen, standing by her parents’ car, her eyes full of a future I wasn’t a part of. My father’s empty chair at the head of the dinner table. The two most important departures of my life had taught me the same brutal lesson. When people have a choice between staying with me or leaving for something bigger, brighter, better... they always leave.
Tessa was fighting for me now, and God, I loved her for it. But her parents’ words were toxic. The quiet, seeping kind that gets into the soil and kills things from the roots up.
Limited by geography. The pinnacle of marine research. A mind like Tessa’s.
I wanted to believe she was immune to it. But what if she wasn’t? What if, over time, their quiet, relentless belief that she was meant for more started to sound less like judgment and more like truth?
A cold knot of fear tightened in my gut. I couldn’t survive being left on that curb again. I was going to walk into that townhouse tomorrow morning and stand beside her. I wanted to believe she would burn that golden bridge they were building. But as I stared sightlessly out the window, the real question surfaced, raw and terrifying.
What if she decided to cross it instead?
Chapter Nineteen
TESSA
I’d beenawake since before dawn, mentally rehearsing the conversation ahead. The townhouse smelled of coffee and the pastries I’d picked up from Sweet Dreams Bakery an hour ago, but my stomach was too knotted to manage food. Last night, I’d been too wound up to discuss dinner, so I’d said goodnight to my parents in the parking lot at Sunset Siesta and retreated to my bedroom. Where sleep eluded me.
For once, the dining table was clear, my research papers and conservation center plans relocated to the bedroom. Three mugs sat waiting to be filled. Everything looked calm and civilized, as if I were hosting a pleasant morning visit instead of preparing to draw a line in the sand with my own parents. My hair was pulled into a neat knot, and I wore a simple sundress that said Dove Key, not California. I looked like someone who’d made a decision and was ready to stand by it.
