I don’t cry. Not yet. I’m too wrung out for it.
The officer takes Monteith and his associate into custody—they’ll be held until police can arrive from the mainland. People begin to clear out slowly, the way they do when the emergency has passed and the night is coming on. Acca appears at some point, which doesn’t surprise me; news travels fast on a thirty-person island. She takes one look at my face, then at Wyatt’s, and makes a decision.
“Come on,yungaq,” she says to me, using the Aleut word gently. “You’ll stay at the inn tonight. You need rest, and this cottage needs to breathe.” Her eyes cut to Wyatt over my head—a whole conversation in a glance. “I’ll bring her back in the morning.”
I look at Wyatt. His jaw is tight, the muscles working. He gives a single nod.
I want to argue. I want to stay. But Acca is right—the cottage is a crime scene, technically, and the officer needs space to finish his work. I need to think clearly about what I’m going to do about a senate presentation in four days with no research.
I squeeze Wyatt’s hand once. He squeezes back, harder, and doesn’t let go for a long moment.
“Morning,” he says. It’s a promise.
Acca takes me down the hill. I look back once and see Wyatt standing in the open doorway of the cottage, arms crossed, watching us go. Then I see him turn back inside, and I know he’s alone with the broken frames and the gutted cushions and the only place in the world that still holds his parents—and something in my chest aches for him in a way that has nothing to do with my stolen research.
***
Wyatt comes for me in the morning, as promised. He’s at the inn before I’ve finished my coffee, Sabaak at his heel. There’s something different in his face—something quieter, more settled, like a decision he made alone last night and is done reconsidering.
He doesn’t say much. He takes my bag. We drive back up the hill in the early light. When we step back into the cottage—tidier now, the worst of the chaos cleared away, the photographs back on their shelf, though one frame is cracked and held together with tape—I feel the weight of the last day lift just slightly.
We have one day left.
We spend it working. He helps me reconstruct what I can from memory and the cloud backup my laptop had partially synced before it was destroyed. It isn’t much—fragments of notes, a handful of photographs, the audio recordings I’d sent to my own email as they were made—but it’s more than nothing, and something about sitting side by side at his kitchen table, piecing it back together, settles me more than any amount of reassurance could.
That evening, I stand at the window and look at the water going copper in the late light, and I know I have to leave tomorrow. The police arrive at first light. I need to be on that plane.
Wyatt comes up behind me. His arms come around my waist, and his chin drops to the top of my head, and we stand there for a long time, watching the light change on the water, not saying anything.
“I’ll come back,” I say finally. “After the meeting. If you want me to.”
He turns me around. Those hazel eyes are steady on mine—no deflection, no retreat into the gruffness he hides behind when something costs him. “I want you to,” he says. “But we’ll talk about it after. When you’re not standing in front of a senate committee in four days.”
“I’m scared I’m going to fail them.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” He cups my face in both hands, tilts it up. “I’ve been watching you work for ten days. You know these animals. You know this island. That’s not nothing—and whatever’s left of your research is enough for someone who knows what she’s talking about.” A pause. His thumb traces my cheekbone. “You didn’t come all the way out here to fail.”
I close my eyes. Breathe him in. The cottage is quiet around us, the island going to dusk outside, and at this moment—his hands on my face, his voice certain in a way mine hasn’t been all day—is something I want to press between pages and keep.
“Stay with me tonight,” I say.
He answers by pressing his mouth to mine.
This is different from before.
Every other time has had urgency in it—need, heat, something unspoken driving it forward faster than either of us could think. This is slow. This is his hands sliding my shirt over my head and setting it aside like it matters where it lands. His mouth at my temple, my throat, the curve of my shoulder—not rushing toward anything, just learning me again, like he wants to memorize what he’s about to lose for a week.
I pull him closer, not because I can’t help myself but because I choose to. Because tomorrow I leave, and tonight I want every last moment of him I can hold.
He lays me down and takes his time undressing me the rest of the way, his eyes moving over me in the low light with an expression that makes my chest ache. When I reach for him, he lets me pull his shirt off, and I drag my hands over the hard planes of his chest and stomach, feeling the muscle shift under my palms, watching his jaw tighten with the effort of keeping his pace.
“Sylvie.” My name in his mouth, low and rough.
“Don’t stop,” I say. “Don’t you dare stop.”
