"Are you okay?"
"Fine. Great. Last night was... great." The word great tastes like cardboard. Last night was all-consuming and terrifying and the most alive I've felt in years, and I'm reducing it to great because anything more honest would crack me open, and I need to hold myself together for the drive home.
Tucker swings his legs out of bed, pulls on jeans, and crosses to where I'm sitting. He doesn't touch me. Just stands close enough that I can feel the warmth of him, and waits.
"Talk to me," he says.
"I don't know what to say."
"That's a first."
The joke should defuse the tension, but it doesn't. It lands on the taut wire between us and vibrates.
"I'm not good at this part," I say, and the honesty surprises me, leaking through a crack I didn't know was open. "The morning after. The what now. In my books, I skip ahead. Fade to black, chapter break, and when we pick up again, everyone knows what they want and the conversation is witty and the feelings are clear. Real life doesn't have chapter breaks."
"No. It doesn't."
"Tucker, I need—" My voice falters. Ryan's words crawl through my head like insects: too rigid, too predictable, married to her outlines. "I think we should take this slow."
The silence that follows is brief, but I see the hurt flash through his eyes—quick, barely visible, immediately controlled. He's a man trained to absorb impact without flinching, and watching him do it with something I've said is worse than any argument.
"Slow," he repeats.
"We got swept up. The hurricane, the forced proximity, the—" I gesture at the bed, at the room, at the wreckage of a pillow wall that was never going to hold. "It was intense. And intensity can feel like something it's not."
"You think this isn't real?"
"I think I need time to figure out if it is."
He nods. Not the sharp, decisive nod of a man agreeing—the slow, careful nod of a man accepting something he doesn't want. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"I'm not going to push you, Kassidy. If you need time, take time."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
It should be a relief. It's not. His willingness to give me space makes the space feel wrong—like I asked for exactly the thing I didn't want and now I'm stuck with it.
The drive back to Hargrove House is efficient and silent. Tucker drives. I ride in the back with Diana, who is either asleep or performing a masterful impression of it. The coastal road is littered with debris—fallen branches, scattered shingles, a mailbox lying in the middle of the lane—and the sky has that rinsed, apologetic look that comes after a storm.
At Hargrove House, the damage is visible but not catastrophic. A few broken windows. The veranda railing torn away on the south side. The garden reduced to a tangle of sandand sea grass. My rental car sits in the parking area, untouched, coated in salt spray.
The retreat attendees disperse with the shell-shocked efficiency of people emerging from a shared ordeal. Hugs, exchanged numbers, promises to stay in touch that may or may not survive the drive home. Diana presses a business card into my hand and says, "Finish the book. Send it to me when it's done."
Tucker loads my suitcase into the rental. I stand by the driver's door and watch him, and the moment stretches like taffy—elastic, sweet, on the verge of breaking.
"I'll call you," he says.
"Okay."
"Not as a line. As a fact. I will call you."
"I know."
He takes a step closer. His hand lifts, and for a second I think he's going to kiss me—a proper goodbye, the kind that makes airport scenes in movies unbearable. Instead, he tucks the curl behind my ear. The gesture is so gentle, so specific, that my throat closes.
