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For a moment, she couldn’t speak. The storm howled around them, but between their shadows, the air grew still.
Their silence wasn’t defeat. It was acceptance—surrender giving way to something yet undefined.
Amy turned and whispered, “You said you loved me. Back there in the heat of the moment.”
Sully nodded. “I meant it.”
She rose and pressed herself to him, her lips finding his. “I love you too. Diarmid.”
He took her hand then and led her upstairs to her bedroom. They lay together on the bed, fully clothed, holding each other as the storm raged outside.
They stayed that way until the lightning faded into the distance and the rain softened to a steady rhythm against the glass—two souls waiting for morning to come, and for life to begin again.
Sunlight crept back into the world like a shy apology.
Through the salt-streaked windows, a pale gold shimmer spread across the floorboards, turning the puddles of rainwater into flecks of fire. The storm had blown itself out sometime before dawn. The air was left clean and fragile, heavy with the scent of wet pine and sea.
Sully woke with Amy’s head resting against his shoulder. Her hand was curled beneath his, and their clothes were still damp from the long night. For a while he stayed still, listening to the quiet rise and fall of her breathing. The rhythm settled something deep inside him.
He thought of that moment on the roof—the sickening jerk of the harness, her scream, the hollow space where she should have been. Nearly losing her had cracked something open in him.
When she stirred, he brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Morning,” he murmured.
She blinked against the light. “Morning.”
They separated reluctantly. He soaked in the small routine comforts of the morning—the shower’s hiss, the smell of fresh coffee. By the time they met in the kitchen, Amy was in jeans and a soft flannel shirt, sleeves rolled past her elbows.
He leaned against the counter, mug in hand, unable to look at her without feeling that pull again—not just attraction, but certainty. The kind a man feels when he knows exactly where he’s supposed to be.
Amy set down her phone. “I need to call my attorney, let him know what happened,” she said after a moment. “I’ll have him connect with the network. I have to find out where the payment stands—what we get, if anything, after last night.”
Sully frowned. “You think they’ll pay after the way you kicked Mason out?”
“Depends on who controls the purse strings,” she said. “That’s why I want to hand this over to Delaney; he’ll handle it the right way. Shannon’s pragmatic. She knows the footage has value. They got their drama.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, there was definite drama.”
A hint of sarcasm touched her smile. “After that, I want to gather everyone—Mac, Kelsey, Kaitlin, and Matt. We need to talk about the next steps.”
He sipped his coffee. “You’ve already got next steps in mind?”
Amy paused by the window, watching the waves in the distance glitter like torn glass in the sunlight. “I think I do,” she said finally. “I keep turning over everything that’s happened here—what Verity intended for the mansion.”
Sully set his mug down and waited.
“What if we stop trying to erase that?” she said. “All this time, everyone’s running from the past or cashing in on it. What if we do neither?”
He raised a brow. “What are you thinking?”
“That we stop treating the past like a curse,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “We acknowledge what happened. We tell the truth. Verity wanted this place to be a refuge—and it helped many people, much more than it hurt. Maybe it’s time to finish what she started.”
“You mean to stay the course then?”
“Not exactly the same course, but we would stop hiding from the bad parts. We’ll keep a historical center about the island’s maritime past and what really happened here. No ghost hunts, no sensationalism. Just reality. We tell the story of the foundation Verity created to help unmarried pregnant women and the number of women it helped over the years. This has always been first and foremost place for recovery and restoration. We also tell the story of the murders. The greed of Dr. Whitaker and his evil deeds.”
Sully leaned back, digesting that. It sounded… right. Grounded. Real.
“Don’t hide from what it is,” he said. “Be what it is.”
