My wife.
The mother of my son.
Or that she’d end up holding my heart so completely.
The paths we wore into this place have grown over, but I find them anyway. My feet move before my eyes catch up. Muscle memory.
Cam watches everything, his head turning slowly as he takes it all in. He reaches for a low branch, and I let him. He grips it with both hands, then looks at me—waiting.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s all right, bub.”
He lets go, and his fists go straight back to my shirt.
I lift him onto my shoulders, settling him there. His hands go straight into my hair, fingers tangling, and I keep both hands on his thighs to steady him.
Charlotte moves ahead along the tree line, quiet and focused, taking it in her own way. Then we see it—what’s left of the shelter is still standing.
The back wall is gone. The roof didn’t last. But the uprights I drove into the ground are still there—weathered gray, worn down by years of wet season, but holding. The crossbeams are still joined, still doing their job.
I stop in front of it, taking it in.
There was no real plan when I built it. Just instinct. What Ryan taught me. I’d never built anything like it before—and it held. Longer than it should have.
Charlotte comes up beside me, her shoulder brushing mine and staying there. She looks at the frame, then up at Cam.
“This is where Mummy and Daddy lived.”
Cam shifts on my shoulders, his grip tightening in my hair.
Charlotte's gaze stays on what's left of the shelter.
“This is where you and I decided we were going to be happy, no matter what the world had taught us.”
I glance at her, but she doesn't look back—just keeps her eyes on it, something private moving through her expression.
I know what she's remembering.
I remember it too.
The wreck sits further in, where the trees open toward the beach. What’s left of the yacht is barely recognizable now—the hull sunk deeper into the sand, sections of the deck collapsed and open to the sky. Rust has eaten through the metal, and vines have taken hold, threading through the railings and into what used to be the cabin.
“It feels like a lifetime ago,” she says.
“It does.”
She reaches up, brushing her hand over Cam’s leg. “And then we left, and you came along,” she says to him. “And everything got better.”
Cam shifts, then reaches down toward her, his hand opening and closing. Charlotte takes it, presses a quick kiss to his fingers, then lets go.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go see them.”
We find the graves easily.
Time has softened everything. The mounds have settled, the edges less defined—but still there. The markers remain, weathered and leaning slightly, but standing.
Charlotte goes to them without hesitation. She crouches and starts clearing the growth with her hands, brushing debris away the same way she used to.
“Dane and I made it back. We told you we would.”
