Her face was worth it.
Lily's heart did something complicated in her chest.
Day 22. She's better at this than I expected. The filming, I mean. She doesn't just point the camera at pretty things. She finds angles I wouldn't have thought of. Asks questions that make me think harder about why I do what I do.
Megan would say that'ssignificant.
Megan would probably be right.
I hate when Megan's right.
A smile tugged at Lily's lips. She could picture him writing this—brow furrowed, irritated at his own feelings, trying to logic his way out of something that didn't respond to logic.
The final entry was dated yesterday. Before the ghost net. Before everything went sideways.
Day 24. Reef check with L. She's starting to recognize species without prompting. Asked about the coral bleaching at Site 7—not for content, just because she wanted to understand.
I told her things I don't usually tell people. About the work. About why it matters. About what we stand to lose if we don't pay attention.
She listened. Actually listened.
It's been a long time since someone listened like that.
Lily closed the journal carefully, running her thumb along the worn leather cover.
This was him. The real him. Not the grumpy scientist who'd tried to leave her on the porch. Not the reluctant host who'd grudgingly shared his cabin. This—these quiet observations, these moments of unexpectedpoetry—this was the Alex Carmichael he kept hidden from the world.
Gentle. Reflective. Earnest.
It's been a long time since someone listened like that.
She looked at him sleeping, his face slack and unguarded, the lines of tension smoothed away. In sleep, men always looked like the softer versions of themselves. Adorable.
This was the person she couldn't get enough of. Not the prickly exterior or the scientific credentials or the way he looked with his shirt off—though that certainly didn't hurt. This. The man who wrote about turtle mothers with reverence. Who saw expressions on fish faces. Who hid his tenderness in brown leather journals because showing it to the world felt too dangerous.
She wanted to know all of him. Every hidden corner. Every carefully guarded thought.
The question was whether he'd ever let her.
Lily set the journal back on the nightstand, exactly where she'd found it, and settled into the chair to wait.
Outside, the afternoon light shifted gold to amber. The waves kept their rhythm. And somewhere on theeastern shore, a nest full of eggs waited for the moment they'd break free and race toward the sea.
Patience. For some, the word carried a heavy weight. As if waiting for something miraculous didn't require its own kind of courage.
Lily was learning.
Chapter Twelve
A day and a half later, Alex's hand had healed enough that he'd stopped wincing every time he flexed it, and the fever was nothing but a memory.
He'd been a lousy patient. He knew this because Lily had told him approximately seventy times—when he'd insisted he was fine a full twelve hours before he actually was, when she'd caught him trying to sneak out to check on the turtle nest, when he'd grumbled about being "coddled" while simultaneously accepting every cup of tea she made him.
In his defense, he wasn't used to being taken care of. It made him twitchy. Uncomfortable. Like wearing a shirt that didn't quite fit.
But Lily hadn't let him wriggle out of it. She'd simply rolled her eyes, called him a "grumpy toad," and keptshowing up with tea and fresh bandages and that particular expression that saidI see through your bullshit, Carmichael.
Now he was back to his usual routine—organizing specimens, reviewing notes, pretending he wasn't hyperaware of her presence on the bed behind him.
