Travis laughs short and sharp. “You're her new boyfriend? Cute. She always did like the strong, silent type. Doesn’t last. She’ll come running back when she realizes no one else can handle her.”
Ronan takes one step forward. “You’ve got five seconds to get in your car and drive away.”
Travis’s smile thins. “Or what?”
“Or I make sure you don’t walk straight for a week.”
The threat is quiet. No shouting. No posturing. Just a fact.
Travis glances at me again, eyes dark with something ugly, then back to Ronan. He must see whatever I see in Ronan’s face because his posture shifts. Not retreat, exactly. Calculation.
“This isn’t over,” he says to me through the glass. “You can’t run forever, Isla. You’ll miss me. You always do.”
He turns, walks down the steps, and gets into the sedan. The engine starts. Tires spit gravel as he backs out, then peels down the road.
The silence that follows is deafening. I unlock the door with shaking hands and pull it open.
Ronan hasn’t moved. He’s still standing there, watching the taillights disappear around the bend.
I step onto the porch. “You didn’t have to do that.”
He finally looks at me. “Yeah. I did.”
The wind moves through the pines, carrying the salt of the sea. My hair whips across my face. I brush it back.
“You care,” I say quietly.
His jaw tightens. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
He exhales through his nose and looks away toward the bluff, where the lighthouse beam is just starting to cut through the gathering dusk.
“I told you last night,” he says. “I’m no good for you.”
“You keep saying that.” I step closer. “But you keep showing up.”
He meets my eyes then—dark, stormy. “Because I can’t stay away. And that’s the problem.”
“Ronan—”
He turns abruptly and starts down the steps.
“Don’t,” I call after him. “Don’t just walk away again.”
He pauses at the bottom, shoulders rigid. Doesn’t turn.
“I’m trying to do the right thing,” he says, voice rough. “For once.”
Then he keeps walking, down the drive, toward the road, disappearing into the lengthening shadows.
I stand on the porch, arms wrapped around myself, watching until he’s gone, and the wind picks up, cold and sharp.
Inside the cottage, the coffee mug still sits in the sink, water pooled around its base.
I close the door, lock it, and lean my forehead against the wood.
Travis is here.
