“Day three crash,” Hoyt said, not unkindly.
“What?”
“You.” He propped his feet on the railing. “You come in on adrenaline, you ride on reunion and momentum for forty-eight hours, and then the noise catches up. It’s a good noise,” he added quickly, like he was afraid of offending me on his own porch. “But it’s noise.”
“It is a good noise.” I scrubbed a hand over my face, scruff rasping my palm. “I love being here.”
“But?”
I huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “But I don’t remember how to sleep in a house.”
He didn’t fill the silence, instead letting the ocean fill it for a minute.
“Is that new?” he asked at last.
“Newish.” I tipped my head back and stared up at the night. “It’s been worse stateside since I discovered how loud ‘quiet’ is.”
“You talk to anybody about it?”
I made a face. Talking wasn’t high on my list of things to do.
Wind lifted the edge of the outdoor rug and let it drop. Somewhere below us, sand shifted in the dark. I traced the line of the dune fence with my eyes until the urge to pace eased.
“I will,” I said finally. “I just… needed to get out first.”
“Of the Navy?” Surprise tinged my brother-in-law’s tone. Of course it did. I still hadn’t told them the truth of why I was here.
“Of the box I was in.” I flexed my hands on my knees. “I’m not ready to give you the long version.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.” He said it with the ease of truth. “You know that, right?”
“Caroline is gonna want one.”
“She’s gonna want to know you’re all right.” He tipped his chin toward the sliding door. “She knows where you’ve been doesn’t come with easy stories.”
“It’s not a story,” I said, sharper than I meant to. I sucked in a breath, dropped my voice. “Sorry.”
Hoyt’s mouth did that small not-smile he used when he was deciding to absorb rather than deflect. “What do you need tonight?”
I thought about saying nothing. I thought about lying and saying I was fine, because we all had our roles and mine had historically been the unflappable one, the one who could make a joke and shift the topic with a grin and a shoulder, the one who was made of angles and calm.
Honesty tasted like copper. “A place to be awake that doesn’t keep your whole house awake with me.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Figured.”
Aubrey’s voice floated out through the screen, high and earnest as she continued the bedtime story: “—and then Max said, ‘No gators in the bathtub,’ and Logan said, ‘But what if they’re baby—‘ and Mama said, ‘Nope.’”
Hoyt chuckled, thumb running along the arm of his chair. “You could take the guest room, but the baby monitor might make you crazy.”
“It’s not the monitor,” I said. “It’s… everything. And none of it is wrong.”
“I know.”
He let that sit. I let it sit with him. We’d both learned the usefulness of not rushing a fix. I appreciated his steadiness. Caroline deserved that in her life after where we’d started.
“You’re still welcome here as long as you want,” he said after a bit. “This is your home as much as ours. But I do have a thought.”
“Hit me.”
