"That was three hours ago."
"You're tracking my caffeine intake?"
"I'm trained to observe." He sets the mug on the railing. "It's just coffee, Kassidy."
My name in his mouth does something I refuse to examine. I take the mug.
"Thank you."
"How was the workshop?"
"Enlightening. Diana told us we're all emotionally faking it."
"Are you?"
The question lands sideways—half casual, half sniper shot. His eyes are steady. Green with flecks of brown, or brown with flecks of green. I can't decide, which is annoying, because I notice details for a living.
"Maybe," I say. "Are you?"
Something passes across his face—quick, barely visible, like a cloud's shadow on water. "Maybe."
He takes a sip from his own mug, which I now notice he's been holding this whole time. He didn't just bring me coffee. He came to have coffee. With me.
This is not helping.
He leans against the railing, and the fabric of his shirt pulls across his shoulders. His forearms are tanned, ropy with muscle, and there's a scar on his left wrist—thin, white, old. Training or combat. Either way, a history written on skin.
I am noticing his forearms. This retreat is supposed to fix my writing, not give me new distractions.
"Storm coming in," he says, nodding toward the horizon.
I follow his gaze. The sky to the south has gone dark—not the soft gray of a passing shower, but the bruised, greenish black that means business.
"How bad?"
"They're watching a system in the Atlantic. Tropical storm, potentially upgrading." He says this with the same calm he uses for everything, like hurricanes and coffee orders exist on the same emotional register. "If it tracks this way, they'll evacuate the coast."
"Evacuate? We just got here."
"Hurricanes don't check retreat schedules."
"I know that. I just—" I grip my mug tighter. "I need this time. I need to be here. I have a deadline and a book that's falling apart and this is the first place I've been able to write in months. I can't just?—"
I stop myself. Because I'm monologuing at a security professional about my manuscript crisis, and that's a new low even for me.
Tucker watches me with an expression I can't decipher. Not pity—I'd shut down if it were pity. Something more like recognition. Like he understands what it means to need something you can't control.
"Nothing's decided yet," he says. "Just stay flexible."
"I don't do flexible. Flexible is for people who don't have outlines and deadlines."
His mouth twitches. "You outline hurricanes?"
"I outline everything. My books, my weeks, my meals. My ex said—" I catch myself again. Stop quoting Ryan. Stop letting Ryan's voice narrate your life. "Never mind."
The radio on Tucker's hip crackles. A voice—different from last night's—cuts through: "Brennan, Calder wants you on the call at 1400. Storm tracking update."
Tucker straightens, and the casual man leaning on the railing vanishes. In his place is someone sharper, more contained, like a blade slipping back into its sheath. "Copy. On my way."
