Page 162 of Neap & Spring

“Be careful,” she calls after me. “Go get your girl, Callum.”

I nod, not trusting my voice, and push out into the storm.

The wind hits me, nearly knocking me back against the door. Rain is coming down in sheets so thick I can barely see my truck parked twenty feet away. The temperature has dropped at least ten degrees since this morning, and the rain is ice-cold, soaking through my jacket in seconds.

I put my head down and run for the truck.

The door fights me when I try to open it, the wind trying to rip it from my hands. I have to use both hands to pull it shut once I’m inside, and even then it takes two tries and all my weight against it.

The windshield is instantly covered in water. I turn on the wipers but they’re nearly useless, barely keeping up with the deluge, just smearing water back and forth.

I can’t see more than ten feet in front of me.

I start the engine anyway.

Vivienne is in that cottage, all alone, and I promised myself I’d give her space. But I never promised I’d let her face this storm by herself.

The truck pulls out of the parking lot, headlights cutting through the rain and doing almost nothing, just reflecting back at me off the wall of water.

I press down on the gas and drive straight into the storm.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Vivienne

The cottage is shaking like the whole structure is being tested by the full force of the Pacific and the ocean has decided it wants to personally tear it apart, board by board.

I’m sitting on the couch with my knees pulled up to my chest, arms wrapped around my shins with a blanket draped over my shoulders even though it’s not really cold. The windows are rattling in their frames so violently I keep expecting the glass to shatter. The sound is nerve-shredding. It sounds like someone’s outside with a jackhammer working on every pane at once, trying to break through.

Rain is hitting the roof relentlessly, and it’s deafening. It’s so loud and constant, it feels like the storm is trying to flatten the cottage into the sand and erase it completely from existence.

The power went out twenty minutes ago.

One second I was staring at the lamp across the room, and the next I was sitting in complete darkness while the cottage groaned and shook around me.

I have two candles lit on the coffee table now — the emergency ones Margo left in the kitchen drawer — and they’re flickering every time the wind finds a new gap in the walls to push through. Their flames dance sideways, throwing shadows that jump and twist across the walls, making everything feel unstable and so scary.

I should have left.

I know I should have left. Margo knocked on my door this morning and told me the storm was tracking worse than expected. It had intensified overnight, and the coastal flood warnings were being upgraded to evacuations. She offered to let me stay at her place in town where the buildings are newer and sturdier and not literally built on sand.

But I told her I’d be fine.

I lied.

The truth is, I haven’t been fine in three days, and I didn’t want to be around people while I wasn’t fine. I didn’t want to make small talk and pretend or explain why I looked like I hadn’t slept.

I’ve been sitting in this cottage for three days trying to figure out what comes next.

Telling Callum about Stellan felt like a giant boulder lifting off my chest. I’d been carrying this heavy secret for so long I’d forgotten what it felt like to stand up straight and to breathe without that constant pressure crushing down on my ribs. The second I said it all out loud — Stellan, the harassment, the stolen dish, the public humiliation, why I disappeared — the burden just … dropped.

It fell away and I could breathe again. Full breaths that filled my lungs completely.

Callum knows now. He knows everything.

And he didn’t look at me like I was broken. He didn’t look at me with pity or like I was something fragile that needed careful handling. He looked at me like he wanted to kill Stellan Voss with his bare hands. But also with something that felt like overflowing love — tender and fierce at the same time. He told me I was brave. I was strong. He was in awe of me for surviving it, even though he wished I hadn’t had to carry it alone.

But then I left. I walked out of his apartment at two in the morning because I needed space to process what it meant that he knew. That someone finally knew, and I didn’t have to be alone with it anymore.