"Your sister sounds wise."
"She's a pain in my ass. But yeah. She's wise."
"Who does she send? What authors?"
"Roberts. Kleypas. Someone called Talia Hibbert who made me laugh out loud on an airplane, which earned me looks."
He's read Talia Hibbert. A former Navy SEAL has read Talia Hibbert and laughed on an airplane.
"You're staring," he says.
"I am not."
"Your mouth is open."
I close my mouth. "I'm just... recalibrating expectations. You're not what I pictured when I heard 'security detail.'"
"What did you picture?"
"Someone who grunts and stands in corners and doesn't have opinions about Kazuo Ishiguro."
"I can grunt if it helps."
The laugh catches me off guard—sharp and real and a little too loud for the quiet room. His eyes crinkle at the corners, and he looks pleased with himself, and the pillow barrier feels about as effective as a speed bump.
The power flickers. Dies. Comes back. In the two seconds of darkness, my hand finds the edge of the mattress and grips, and my heart slams against my ribs with a violence that has nothing to do with Tucker and everything to do with the storm.
"You okay?" His voice is immediate, tuned to a frequency of calm that feels deliberate.
"Fine. Just—I'm not great with storms."
"Noted."
"It's stupid. I grew up on the coast. I should be used to it."
"Fear doesn't care about geography." He says it flat, factual, the way someone speaks about physics. "In the teams, some of the toughest guys I knew had fears that didn't matchtheir résumés. One guy, combat decorated, terrified of spiders. Another couldn't stand heights. Fear's not rational."
"What are you afraid of?"
The question hangs between us. Outside, something crashes—a tree, maybe, or a section of fencing—and the building groans.
"The quiet," Tucker says after a long pause. "When I was on the teams, everything was loud. Missions, training, the guys. Always something happening, always someone needing something from me. Now..." He trails off, turns a page he hasn't read. "The quiet is harder than any deployment I ever ran."
The confession lands in my chest like a stone—real and unperformed. No movie-moment drama, nothing rehearsed. Just true. A truth that sits inside you and refuses to be processed quickly.
"I know quiet," I say. "Different kind, but I know it. Three months staring at a blank page. No words, no characters, no voice. Just... nothing. Like someone unplugged whatever makes me me."
Tucker shifts on the bed, turning toward me slightly. The pillow wall tilts but holds. "What happened? If it's not too?—"
"My ex." The words come out flat, factual. Like reporting the weather. "Ryan. Three years together. He left because I was 'too predictable' and 'married to my outlines.' His words." I stare at the cursor blinking on my screen. "Which would've been fine—breakups happen—except he said the same thing about my writing. That my books were as predictable as I was. And something about that stuck. Like a splinter I can't get out."
"He's wrong."
"You haven't read my books."
"I don't need to. Anyone who writes the way you were talking on that beach—feeling your way through a scene, arguing with your own characters—that's not someone who writes predictable anything. That's someone who cares too much to be formulaic."
My throat tightens. Not with sadness—something else. Something warmer and more dangerous.
