The restaurant is small---a dozen tables, mismatched chairs, salt-weathered wood that smells like the ocean---and it's half full with evacuees celebrating the storm's end. There's a warmth to the place that goes beyond the generator-powered heaters. People survived something together, and the relief has made everyone slightly drunk on goodwill.
Kassidy appears at 7:15, and my brain briefly stops processing information.
She's wearing a dress---not the sundress from the first night but something different. Dark blue, simple, falling just below the knee. Her hair is down, loosely curled instead of fighting against itself, and she's done something with her eyes that makes them look like midnight.
She slides into the booth across from me, and the candlelight catches her collarbone, her jaw, the hollow of her throat.
"You clean up well," she says.
"Same shirt, different context."
"Context matters." She picks up the menu---handwritten, one page, limited options because the kitchen is working with whatever survived the storm. "Are you a wine person?"
"Depends on the wine."
"They have exactly two options. Red or white."
"Red."
"Same."
We order. The wine arrives in water glasses because the regular ones broke during the hurricane. Kassidy laughs at this---a real, unguarded sound that makes her whole face rearrange---and something shifts in my chest. Not the urgent, adrenaline-laced feeling of the kiss in the library. Something slower. Deeper. The feeling of looking at someone and knowing, with quiet certainty, that you want more of this. All of it.
"Tell me something I don't know about you," she says, swirling her wine.
"I can cook."
"Everyone says they can cook."
"I actually can. My grandmother was Italian---second generation, grew up in a kitchen in Brooklyn. She taught me to make pasta from scratch when I was ten."
"You make pasta from scratch."
"Focaccia too."
"Tucker Brennan. Former Navy SEAL. Makes focaccia." She shakes her head. "You're aware you're a romance novel hero come to life, right? This isn't real. You're a fictional character who escaped into the wild."
"If I were fictional, I'd have better dialogue."
"Your dialogue is fine. Better than fine." She takes a sip of wine. "Tell me about your team. The Salt and Steel guys. I keep hearing about them from the other writers, but all I know is Riggs has no boundaries."
"Riggs is harmless. Served with the 75th Rangers, got out, couldn't sit still. Calder hired him for exactly the energy that gets under everyone's skin but somehow keeps morale up."
"And Decker?"
"Marine. Quiet. Reliable. A guy who does his job so well you forget he's there, which is the highest compliment in security work."
"And Calder?"
"Calder is..." I pause, searching for the right words. "Calder is the reason I'm not still in my apartment staring at walls. He built Salt and Steel because he saw what happens to guys like us when we transition. The skills don't disappear, but the purpose does. He gave us a framework."
"A mission."
"Exactly."
Kassidy nods. "Writers have that too. The community. When you're working alone, you can convince yourself you're the only one who's struggling. Then you go to a retreat or a conference and realize everyone's fighting the same blank page."
"Diana Hartwell doesn't seem like she fights blank pages."
