"It's not predictable," I say. "It's honest. And brave. And the scene where Sophie photographs the seagulls to avoid feeling something? That's one of the best things I've ever read."
Her breath catches. A small, involuntary sound, like something cracking open.
"You recognized Ethan," she says. Not a question.
"Hard to miss."
"The scar on the wrist was a giveaway, wasn't it."
"The scar, the reading glasses, the fact that he quotes literary fiction during emotional conversations. You drew me, Kassidy. Accurately."
"I drew a character inspired by?—"
"You drew me."
She closes her eyes. The flush has reached her cheeks, and her hands are wrapped around the tea she forgot to drink. When she speaks, her voice is stripped of all its usual defense mechanisms. "I didn't plan to. It just happened. You were there, and you were interesting, and my brain does this thing where itabsorbs people and turns them into characters, and I couldn't stop?—"
"I'm not upset."
Her eyes open. "You're not?"
"I'm..." I set the laptop on the side table and lean forward, elbows on my knees. The distance between our chairs is maybe four feet. Close enough to see the pulse at her throat. "I'm trying to figure out why you stopped the scene."
"What?"
"Chapter twelve. Sophie and Ethan. He reaches for her. The scene cuts off."
"Because I didn't know what happens next."
"Yes, you do."
The words land between us like a match dropping. Her lips part, and for a second the room is nothing but the sound of rain and the nearly audible hum of everything we've been not saying.
"So..." I choose the next words like stepping stones across a river. "Does the hero kiss her?"
"I haven't decided yet."
"Maybe you need research."
The silence that follows is the loudest thing I've ever heard. Louder than gunfire, louder than helicopter rotors, louder than the hurricane that brought us here. Kassidy stares at me, and I watch the war on her face—want against fear, instinct against control, the writer who knows what this scene requires versus the woman who's terrified to live it.
I stand. She doesn't move. I cross the four feet between our chairs, and she looks up at me with those dark eyes, and every ounce of training I have is screaming stay professional while the rest of me says not a chance.
"Tucker." My name in her mouth, barely a whisper.
"Tell me to stop."
She doesn't.
I cup her face in both hands. Her skin is warm, impossibly soft. The curl—that stubborn, untamable curl—falls across my fingers, and I brush it back the way I've wanted to since the first morning I watched her sleep.
The kiss is slow. Deliberate. A kiss I've been thinking about for days, and I want to get it right—not technically, but emotionally. Her lips are soft, and they taste like tea and surprise, and for a heartbeat she's frozen, not kissing back, just receiving, and I think: I've misread everything.
Then her hands come up. One grips my shirt at the chest. The other finds the back of my neck, pulling me closer, and she kisses me back with a hunger that goes beyond physical. She kisses me back like she's been holding her breath for months and just remembered how to exhale.
I pull her to her feet without breaking the kiss. She's small against me—the top of her head barely reaches my chin—and the difference in our heights means she has to rise on her toes, her body pressing against mine in a line of contact that sends heat through every nerve ending I own.
The kiss deepens. Her fingers tighten in my hair. My hand slides to the small of her back, drawing her closer, and the sound she makes—low, involuntary, half sigh—is the most honest thing either of us has said in days.
