He leaned in. She did too.
Their lips met in the space between restraint and longing, shattering every careful silence they’d built. The kiss wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t rehearsed. It was raw and aching and full of all the years they’d spent trying to forget how this felt.
She pressed closer, her hand finding his coat lapel. He gathered her in, as if he couldn’t help it, as if he’d spent three years with this absence carved into his chest.
When they pulled apart, neither of them spoke. Mary-Ann’s heart was thudding so hard she could feel it in her fingertips. Her lips still tingled, not only from the kiss, but from the truth of it. The unspoken ache, the certainty that neither time nor distance had dulled whatever invisible thread still held them fast.
Her breath trembled against his collar.
He touched her cheek with the back of his hand, reverently. It wasn’t a goodbye, not quite. But it wasn’t a promise either. Just a moment that held still, fragile, and was too real to put into words.
“I’m not sorry that happened,” he said, voice low but steady. It was all he gave her, and everything she would remember.
She could have answered. Should have. But the truth was still too large, too bright to speak aloud. It pulsed behind her ribs like a secret she’d never meant to give away. He didn’t press her. He didn’t need to. Her silence told him everything louder, deeper, more honestly than words ever could.
Without a word, he took a step back.
She let him go. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Her throat was tight, her thoughts unraveled. If she opened her mouth, she wasn’t sure what might fall out. Would it be something foolish, something brave, something true?
But her eyes never left his.
Neither of them looked away.
He walked away first, slow and sure, as though putting distance between them required more effort than he’d admit. Mary-Ann stayed where she was, watching as his back receded down the path. Her hands were still folded at her waist, but her fingers trembled faintly against the fabric of her glove.
When she finally turned, the wind caught her shawl again. She didn’t fix it. Let it flutter. Let it pull. Because some part of her still stood in the moment they had shared, anchored there, breathless and undone.
She walked slowly, each step with a strange mix of lightness and ache. The path felt different now, as though it remembered what had just happened. The wind had gentled, or maybe she’d simply stopped noticing its bite. Her hand drifted once to her lips, then dropped quickly, as if the memory could be disturbed by touching it too often.
She didn’t try to name what the kiss meant. Not yet. But it lived in her now in the racing of her pulse, in the quiet sense that something had shifted. Not broken. Not healed. Just changed.
She passed the corner where Mrs. Haversham always placed her flowerpots, still damp from the morning watering. A cat lounged on a windowsill across the street, watching her as if privy to secrets best kept silent. A boy darted from a doorway with a kite trailing behind him, laughing as the fabric snapped in the breeze. Nothing looked different. And yet every breath felt strange in her chest, fuller, harder to hold.
The town was waking up around her, the soft murmur of brooms against stone, the squeak of a window being opened. Life continuing. But she walked through it as though wrapped in another hour entirely. One that still echoed with his voice, his touch, his kiss.
And though the town still lay quiet ahead, the day no different than any other, she knew something had begun, something she couldn’t undo and didn’t want to. Not ever.
Chapter Seventeen
Saturday morning, withmist lingering along the rooftops, Mary-Ann’s mind refused to stay in the present. She sat at the breakfast table, the scent of tea mingling with sea air that slipped through a cracked window. She hadn’t touched her toast. The Sommer Sentinel lay open beside her, though her gaze drifted more to the sea beyond the pane than to the ink on the page.
Her father turned a page with a dry rustle. “This is a report on the latest information about those two children rescued after hunting dragons in the beach caves,” he said, amused. “Wooden swords and all. They were looking for treasure, it seems. Got themselves caught by the tide.”
Mary-Ann blinked, then glanced down at the column.
She hadn’t thought of the beach caves in years. As a girl, she’d once begged Hamish to take her exploring. He had come, of course, armed with nothing but a walking stick he called a ‘sword’ and a pouch of peppermints. They hadn’t found dragons or treasure, only a flock of startled gulls and an old fisherman’s net. But she remembered how the cave walls had shimmered faintly with dampness, and how the tide whispered secrets as it crept in.
She frowned now, unsettled by how quickly that memory had surfaced. It was just a children’s story, a harmless adventure. But something about the image of those two boys with wooden swords felt like a thread left dangling. And the tide, always the tide, never waited long.
“Two Rescued After Seaside Dragon Hunt”
Two children were rescued last week after becoming trapped by the tide inside one of the shallow beach caves north of Sommer-by-the-Sea. According to their mother, the children entered the cave with wooden swords and a tin lantern “in search of dragons and buried treasure.” Neither was injured, though both were soaked and tearful by the time a local fisherman helped pull them free. The Town Council reminds residents to be mindful of the tides and not to enter coastal formations without an adult present.
“They’re lucky they didn’t drown,” her father muttered, shaking his head. “Foolish thing to do.”
Mary-Ann nodded faintly, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
She folded the paper and set it aside. The kiss lingered like warmth on her skin, impossible to ignore. She hadn’t meant to think of it, not now, not with her father seated across from her. But it returned anyway. Quinton’s hand at her back, the press of his mouth against hers, the way time had slipped sideways for one breathless instant.
