She says it once more when I follow her over. Once is enough.
Afterward she lies with her head on my chest, breathing hard, fingers curled loose against my ribs. The cottage settles around us. The harbor moves outside the window.
Afterward, tangled in sheets that smell like us, she traces the scar on my wrist with one fingertip.
"You never told me how you got this," she says.
"Training accident. Rappelling exercise in Coronado. Rope burned through my glove."
"That's less romantic than the fiction version."
"What's the fiction version?"
"Saving someone. Being heroic."
"I was being heroic. I was heroically failing to tie a proper knot."
She laughs against my chest, and the vibration of it fills the dark room like music.
"Tucker?"
"Yeah?"
"I've been thinking about Tidehaven."
"What about it?"
"Calder mentioned there's an opening at Salt and Steel. A coordinator role---logistics, scheduling, the organizational stuff."
"He mentioned that, did he?"
"He might have brought it up. Casually. Over email."
"Calder doesn't do anything casually."
"The point is---" She lifts her head, and her eyes are bright in the dark. "I can write anywhere. This cottage has better light than my Charleston apartment. And Tidehaven has this harbor, and this bookstore, and this man who makes focaccia and reads Ishiguro and drives two and a half hours with Thai food when I'm being an idiot."
"Are you asking to move in with me?"
"I'm asking if you'd want that."
"Kassidy." I tuck the curl behind her ear---the gesture that's become ours, the small, intimate ritual that meansI see you."Move in with me. To Tidehaven."
She pretends to consider. Takes her time. Draws it out with the narrative instinct of a woman who understands pacing.
"Only if I get to use you for research."
"Deal."
She settles against me, and the cottage is quiet, and the harbor laps against the dock outside the window, and the life I've been trying to build since I left the teams---the purpose, thedirection, the reason to wake up at 0430---is lying in my arms with ink-stained fingers and a heart full of stories.
She's curled against me, already drifting. Her hand rests on my chest, the ink stain on her index finger dark against my skin.
The harbor laps against the dock. The cottage settles. And the 0430 silence---the one that used to hollow me out---is just quiet now. Just the sound of her breathing and the scratch of branches against the window and the ordinary, unremarkable miracle of not being alone.
Epilogue
Kassidy
