Today, those impulses were weak—negligible.
Minx meowed from the window ledge but didn’t move. The cat lay in the last patch of direct sunlight, gray fur glowing like embers. She blinked at Lena, radiating feline judgment.
Even the cat thought she was being ridiculous.
She could leave. Still. The option crouched there in the back of her mind like a getaway car with the engine running. Run to another island, another job, another clean slate where nobody knew about Chester or the theft charges or the scared girl who’d learned that people in power destroyed on a whim. It was an easy option.
Safe, in its own tortuous way.
But this time…
This time, the thought of running hurt her stomach.
This time, there was Walter with his terrible jokes and quiet steadiness. There was Lisa with her warm hugs and mothering tendencies. There was the whole ragtag crew at the resort who felt like the family she’d lost in her teens.
This time, there was David.
She was no longer running from something.
Now she had someone to run to.
The realization flowed over her like the sea breeze—gentle but persistent, working its way under her defenses whether or not she liked it. She’d spent so many years running awayfrom things—bad bosses, worse situations, the specter of her own worthlessness—that she’d forgotten how to runtowardsomething.
To choose rather than flee.
A knock at the open door made her look up, heart jumping.
David stood there, barefoot on the sand beyond her small porch, hands tucked in his pockets, eyes searching hers from behind his glasses. The late sun haloed his dark hair with gold, and his face held that look he got when he was trying to read her—careful, patient, waiting for permission.
He didn’t say anything—just waited.
The fact that he’d followed but hadn’t pushed cracked something open in her chest, wider than the fracture in the shell she still held.
Lena stood slowly, her legs stiff from the anxiety she’d been carrying. She walked to him, hyperaware of each step, and held out the shell.
“I found it.” Her voice sounded rough, scraped raw by emotions she hadn’t quite sorted through yet.
David’s gaze dropped to the shell in her palm, and his eyes traced the crack. He looked at it with the same careful attention he gave to everything—noticing details others would miss, like the way the light caught in the fracture.
“Is that the one from the night of the storm?” he asked.
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
He took it gently, electricity sparking where his fingers brushed against hers. He turned the shell over, examining it with the intent focus he usually saved for circuit boards and code. And her.
He handed it back, his movements deliberate. “Still yours.”
The words hit harder than they should have. Something about the way he said it—like the damage didn’t diminish theshell’s value, like damage didn’t equal worthlessness, like being broken and being worthy weren’t mutually exclusive.
Lena took the shell, the warmth from his hands still clinging to it. She walked back to the window, to the ceramic bowl that held memories of her life on this island, and put the damaged shell back in its spot, nestling it between the iridescent olive and the tiny purple coquina.
It belonged there.
They all did—the perfect ones and the damaged ones, the rare finds and the common ones, the whole and the fractured.
She took a breath that felt like surfacing after being underwater too long.
Then she turned to David, who still waited in the doorway, giving her space but refusing to leave her alone in it.
