Who'd seen her guarded and prickly and defended and decided she was worth the effort anyway.
Who made her want to be brave again.
"Okay," shesaid. "I'll try."
Jack squeezed her hand once, then let go. Returned to his window frame. Started whistling—off-key and cheerful—like the past fifteen minutes hadn't just tilted Clara's entire world on its axis.
Clara sat at her drafting table. Picked up her pen. Stared at the blank panel.
And found the dialogue flowing.
Marina wasn't scared of the sea witch. She was scared of her own power. Scared that if she stopped fighting and just let herself be, she might discover she'd been strong enough all along.
The lighthouse keeper told the sailor:"Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is let someone see you dance."
Clara wrote for two hours straight, the words and images pouring out like they'd just been waiting for permission. She finished all three panels by the time the sun started setting, the deadline met with hours to spare.
When she finally set down her pen, Jack was making dinner—pasta because apparently that was his specialty. The lighthouse smelled like garlic and tomatoes and something indefinably warm.
"Deadline met?" he asked without turning around.
"Yeah. I'm mortified to admit that your unsticking method worked,"she said.
"I knew it would work."
Clara stood, stretching muscles that had been cramped for hours. Crossed to the kitchen. Stood beside Jack at the stove, close enough that their shoulders touched.
"Thank you," she said. "For making me dance."
Jack glanced at her, something soft in his expression. "Thank you for letting me."
They stood there for a moment, the evening light golden through the windows, the pasta bubbling on the stove, the comfortable silence of two people who'd somehow become more than strangers in less than two weeks.
Clara thought about the panels she'd just finished. About Marina learning to trust her own strength. About the lighthouse keeper telling someone to be brave.
About how sometimes the characters knew what you needed to hear before you did.
"Jack?"
"Yeah?"
"Will you dance with me again sometime?"
His smile was slow and warm and did complicated things to her pulse. "Anytime you want, Hawkins."
And standing there in her kitchen with the sun setting and Jack Callahan making pasta like he belonged in her space, Clara realized something terrifying:
She was falling for him.
Not might be. Not could be. Was.
Falling for the temporary carpenter with the tragic backstory and the gentle hands and the ability to make her laugh until she couldn't breathe.
Falling for someone who'd told her from the start that he wouldn't stay.
The smart thing would be to stop it. Pull back. Regroup before it was too late. But Clara had just spent two hours writing about bravery.
And maybe the bravest thing she could do was let herself fall.
