Anthony handed it to me without ceremony, like he wasn’t trying to make it a moment. Just set it on the table beside my tea and nudged it closer with two fingers.
It was bright. Not loud—but unmistakably alive. A washed-out sea-glass green, the kind of color that caught light instead of absorbing it. Hope, if hope were allowed to be quiet.
“I thought,” he said carefully, “maybe this one doesn’t have to hold the worst things.”
My throat tightened. I traced my thumb over the cover, feeling the texture beneath my skin. New. Unmarked. Unafraid of me.
Later, while he moved around the house packing something he very deliberately didn’t explain, I sat on the couch and opened it for the first time.
The pages smelled clean. Like possibility. I didn’t write much. Just enough to prove to myself that I could.
I’m learning how to stay.
I’m learning that wanting doesn’t have to mean losing.
I want to learn how to want things that don’t hurt.
I closed it before the words could scare me away from them. Just in time because Anthony appeared with a basket, a blanket and a blinding smile I’d never be able to say no to.
“Trust me,” he said, pulling on his hoodie, the black one I’d already stolen more than once. “There’s something I want to show you.”
The drive was quiet in that easy way we’d learned. Windows cracked. Wind rushing in. His hand resting on my thigh at red lights, grounding without asking anything of me.
When we crested the last hill, I saw it. The lighthouse stood at the edge of the peninsula like a sentinel. Wind-whipped. Weathered. Steady.
Something in my chest shifted as he parked and grabbed the basket. The grass bent under our feet as we walked, the ocean roaring below like it had something important to say whether we were listening or not.
Anthony spread the blanket carefully, anchoring the corners with smooth stones like he’d done this before. Like he’d planned for the wind. Which was very useful considering the weather.
“I used to come here when I first moved here,” he said quietly, the words surprising me as they surfaced. “When everything felt… unmoored.” He glanced up, smiling faintly. “It’s kind of magical, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “It is.”
We ate without rushing. Simple food. Good bread. Fruit that tasted like sunlight. The lighthouse loomed above us, paint chipped, body scarred, still doing exactly what it was built to do.
“This place,” I said after a while, “doesn’t ask anything of you. It just… stands. Warns. Guides.”
Anthony reached for my hand, threading our fingers together like it was the most natural thing in the world. Because it was. What we were to each other couldn’t be defined with words. It was a connection that ran deeper, if we only allowed it to grow.
“I didn’t bring you here to fix anything,” he said after a while. “I just… wanted you to see the place without thinking you had to mean something to it.”
I smiled faintly. “You always think three steps ahead.”
He huffed. “Yeah. That’s part of the problem.”
I tilted my head, watching him. “You don’t have to be careful right now.”
He considered that. The ocean roared before us, relentless, ancient. “I’m scared of doing damage,” he admitted. “Even when I’m trying to do the right thing. Especially then.”
My chest tightened—not with panic, but recognition. “I know,” I said. “I spent a long time thinking if I loved you hard enough, you’d stay. That if I needed less, you wouldn’t feel trapped.”
His jaw flexed. “And I spent a long time thinking if I loved you back the way I wanted to, I’d ruin you.”
We looked at each other then. Really looked. His soft smile mirrored mine.
“I don’t want to be saved anymore,” I said quietly. “I want to be chosen. Even if it’s messy. Even if it scares you.”
Anthony swallowed. His thumb brushed once over the back of my hand—tentative, reverent.
