My chest tightened so hard and suddenly that the pain in my shoulder faded to nothing by comparison—insignificant,irrelevant, a footnote next to the thing that locked my ribs in place and made every breath something I had to negotiate for.
She had grieved me.
Mourned me.
Lying in my bed, in my room, surrounded by my things, and cried until sleep took her because she believed with absolute certainty that I’d died on that shore and she would never see me again.
I stood there longer than I should have, in the doorway, one hand on the frame, just looking at her. Taking in every detail—the rise and fall of her breathing, the way the lamplight caught the curve of her shoulder, the gentle shadow her lashes cast across her cheekbones, the shape of her mouth, the impossible realness of her lying in my bed as if she belonged there, as if she’d always belonged there, as if every night I’d ever spent in this room before her had just been practice for this.
I set the carrier down gently near the door, unlatched the grate, and eased it open.
Doc Fluffbutt emerged with the cautious, dignified deliberation of a creature who would hold his recent ordeal against me for the rest of his natural life. He stretched—front legs first, then back, spine arching high—and shook himself once from ears to tail. He looked up at me, blinking slowly, a silent judgment that made me feel I owed him an apology.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered under my breath. “I remember. All the fish you can eat. I’m good for it.”
He blinked once more, slowly, conveying both deep skepticism regarding my reliability and a willingness to grant a temporary reprieve. Then he immediately turned away, trotted to the bedroom door, and began scratching with rhythmic, insistent intensity—tiny claws against wood, over and over. It was the universal feline signal for: This door is closed, that isunacceptable, and I require immediate attention from someone more competent than you.
I cracked the door open and leaned into the hallway.
“Lock,” I called, keeping my voice low. “Feed him. Water him. He’s been through it.”
A pause from the kitchen.
“Of course he has,” Lock muttered, and I heard the sound of a chair pushing back. “He’s your cat now. You go out and nearly die, and you come back with a cat. That’s very Finn.”
“He’s not my—” I started, then stopped. Arguing about cat ownership at one in the morning, after kayaking twenty miles across the open ocean, seemed like a battle I lacked the energy to fight. “Just—take care of him. Please let him in with Lily; she seems to be his person.”
Doc Fluffbutt strutted through the doorway and into the hall with the imperial bearing of a creature who had survived the apocalypse, a car escape, a crawlspace, and a kayak crossing, and now expected to be treated accordingly. His tail stood straight up, the tip curled slightly forward, and he didn’t look back at me once.
Ungrateful little bastard.
I shut the door.
Silence.
Just her.
Just the sound of her breathing and the distant, muffled sounds of Lock moving around in the kitchen—a cabinet opening, water running, the soft clink of a bowl being set on the floor.
I stood still for another moment, letting the silence settle around me, letting the reality of this room and this moment sink into my bones. The exhaustion pressed down on me with a physical weight now, heavier with every passing second, mybody’s final notice that whatever had been keeping me upright was gone and would not be coming back.
I moved to the bed.
I stripped down in the dim light—jacket, boots, shirt peeled away from dried blood and salt, jeans, socks—until there was nothing left but bruises and bandages and a body that swayed where it stood.
All of that could wait until morning. Every wound, every scrape, every practical concern my surviving brain kept trying to queue up for attention—later. Not now.
I eased onto the mattress behind her, lowering my weight slowly, carefully, bracing one hand against the bed frame to control my descent. I didn’t want the shift of the springs to disturb her. The sheets, cool, clean, and impossibly soft after hours of gravel, metal, and saltwater, caught against my skin. The sensation alone almost undid me, making my eyes sting and my throat close with something I didn’t have a name for.
I lay still for a moment, on my side, facing her back. I was close enough to catch the warmth radiating from her body, close enough to smell her—salt from the ocean air still clinging to her hair, beneath it the faint trace of soap, and something that belonged only to her. I hadn’t known I’d memorized it until this moment, when it flooded my senses and my chest ached with recognition.
I couldn’t stop myself.
Didn’t want to. Didn’t try.
I reached for her.
My arm slid around her waist, pulling her back into me gently but firmly. My hand settled against the soft skin of her stomach where her shirt had ridden up, my fingers spreading across her warmth. I drew her flush against me until her back pressed into my chest and I could feel every breath she took. The contact spread through me like heat returning to frozen limbs—not just physical, not just the relief of touch after hours of isolation, cold, and pain, but something that made the silence in me less loud, less like a held note waiting to collapse.
