Page 165 of Neap & Spring

“You’re bleeding.” His voice goes flat and dangerous. “Vivienne, you’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine, the window just — it just exploded, and there’s glass everywhere and the roof —”

“We need to leave. Now.” He pushes past me into the cottage, his boots tracking water and mud, and he takes in everything in one sweep. The broken window, the tree branch on the floor, the water spreading across the hardwood, the roof screaming. His jaw clenches so hard I can hear his teeth grind. “Jesus Christ, Vivienne. This place isn’t safe.”

“I know. I was just about to grab my keys.”

“We need to go.” He turns back to me, and I can see the fear underneath the urgency now. “My truck is outside, we can —”

A gust of wind hits the cottage so hard the whole structure lurches sideways. I stumble, catching myself on the wall. The roof tears off in a section with a sound like a gunshot, and suddenly water is pouring in from above, cascading down in sheets.

Callum grabs my arm, his grip tight enough to bruise. “Now, Vivienne. Please. We’re leaving now.”

He pulls me toward the door, and I’m moving with him, adrenaline overriding everything else. We make it three steps when the headlights from his truck illuminate something that makes us both freeze.

The driveway is flooding.

Fast.

Water is rushing down from the road in a torrent, and there’s a river where there should be gravel. It’s already halfway up the truck’s tires and still rising, creeping higher with every second. I watch debris flow past, all of it moving with a speed and force that makes my palms sweat.

“Fuck,” Callum breathes.

He pulls out his phone, the screen brightness harsh in the dark cottage, and he checks something, his thumb moving fast across the screen. His expression goes from grim to worse.

“The coast road is completely underwater,” he groans. His voice is flat in that way that means he’s trying very hard to stay calm. “The bridge into town is closed. They’re evacuating the lower peninsula.”

My stomach drops. “What?”

“The storm surge came in faster than anyone predicted. The whole lower coastal road is gone.” He looks at me, and I can see him doing the same calculation I am. We’re trapped here. “We’re not getting out.”

“Callum, the roof is leaking.”

“I know.” He’s already moving, his eyes scanning the cottage with the assessment of someone who grew up in these storms. He grabs the couch, muscles straining, and drags it away from the broken window toward the far wall. “We’ll ride it out in the bedroom. Best chance if the roof goes.”

He’s moving with purpose now that would be reassuring if the situation wasn’t so terrifying. He grabs the blanket I dropped, shakes the water off it, and pulls the cushions off the couch.

And then he just stops and stands there in the middle of my cottage, water dripping off him onto the floor. His chest is heaving. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides.

He looks at me.

And his face cracks wide open.

“What were you thinking?” he yells over the wind. His voice has gone rough and raw and so angry, vibrating with intense emotion. “You should have left hours ago. You should have been somewhere safe. Not in this fucking cottage that’s barely standing. You should have been with me!”

“Callum —”

“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” He’s not yelling now, but his voice fills the space anyway, and it’s barely held in check. “Three days, Vivienne. Three days of almost calling you and texting you and driving past this place just to make sure your car was still here because I didn’t know if you were okay or if you were planning to leave or if you had already left.”

He stops, his hands flexing and unflexing at his sides as he takes in the destruction around us.

“And the investors” — his voice drops, which somehow makes it worse — “they want to change the name. They want to erase the only thing about that restaurant that’s actually mine, the only thing that means something, and you had to be the one to tell me. You’ve been carrying that message for two days along with everything else, and you’re still carrying it alone, and I —”

He stops pacing and turns to face me fully.

And I see everything on his face. The fear that I was in danger. The anger that I put myself at risk. The hurt from three days of silence. The exhaustion of trying to give me space when every instinct was screaming at him to come find me.

And underneath all of it — love. Raw and undeniable and so intense it takes my breath away.