"Drive safe," he says.
"You too."
He steps back. I get in the car. The engine starts with a mundane reliability that feels offensive given the circumstances.
The kiss he gives me through the open window is chaste. A brush of lips. A promise or a farewell—I can't tell which, and the ambiguity is the worst part.
I drive.
For the first thirty minutes, I'm fine. Focused. Hands at ten and two, eyes on the road, mind on logistics. The drive to Charleston is three hours. Enough time to plan the rest of the week: laundry, groceries, the manuscript that now has fifteen new chapters and a beating heart.
At mile forty, the first tear falls. I don't know why—nothing triggered it, no song on the radio, no memory surging up—just a single tear that traces my cheek and drops onto the steering wheel.
At mile fifty, the tears become consistent. Not sobbing. Just a steady, quiet leak, like a pipe that's been under pressure too long.
At mile seventy, I pull into a gas station, park behind the building, and cry properly. Face in hands, shoulders shaking, the ugly, cathartic kind that ruins mascara and clears the chest.
Because here's the truth that I've been running from since I woke up this morning:
Tucker Brennan is not Ryan. Tucker is not a man who would call me predictable and mean it as an insult. He's a man who carried my suitcase and evacuated me from a hurricane and read my unfinished manuscript and recognized himself in it and said who said anything about casual with absolute certainty.
And I just drove away from him. Because I'm scared. Because the last time I let someone in, he rewired my self-worth so thoroughly that I couldn't write a sentence for three months. Because vulnerability feels like a trapdoor, and every time I've fallen through one, the landing has gotten harder.
My phone sits on the passenger seat. His number is in it. He's probably still at Hargrove House, loading equipment, briefing Decker, being professional and steady and patient in the way he does everything.
I pick up the phone. Put it down. Pick it up again.
Me: Thank you for everything. I'm sorry I'm like this.
His reply comes in sixty seconds:
Tucker: You're exactly like you. I like exactly like you. Take your time.
And somehow, that simple, quiet sentence makes the crying worse.
My apartment in Charleston is exactly as I left it—clean, organized, lifeless. The silence hits the moment I drop my keys on the counter. No storm. No jukebox. No reading glasses on the nightstand.
The laptop bag sits by the door. Inside it is a manuscript more alive than anything I've written in years—and a truth I keep trying to outline my way around.
I'm falling for Tucker Brennan. I drove three hours in the wrong direction to avoid admitting it, and my mascara is wrecked, and my apartment has never felt this empty.
I pour a glass of wine. Sit on the couch. Open the laptop.
The cursor blinks and I start typing.
Chapter 12
Tucker
Two weeks.
Fourteen days since the Tidehaven Inn. Since the dance. Since she drove away in a salt-sprayed rental car with mascara she didn't know was smudged and a manuscript I wanted to finish reading.
Fourteen days since take it slow became surface-level texts and carefully polite phone calls and the growing certainty that I'm losing her.
The Salt & Steel office is a converted warehouse in Beaufort—exposed brick, industrial lighting, a conference table made from reclaimed ship timber because Calder has a thing about aesthetics. The team is assembled for the morning briefing, and I'm here in body if not in mind.
"Brennan." Calder's voice cuts through the fog. "You with us?"
