Page 141 of At First Catch

Workers arrive. Dock carts rattle faintly across the boards. Boats shift against the restored slips.

Everything feels alive this morning.

Hadley does that too. She makes everything feel newly possible.

I brush my lips against the top of her head.

“You know what’s weird?” I ask.

“What?”

“I spent most of my life thinking love would feel chaotic.”

She tilts her face toward me. “What does it feel like instead?”

I look at her.

“Peaceful.”

The word surprises me with how true it is. Even the intensity between us feels calm underneath everything else. Like I finally reached a place where I can put down everything I’ve spent my life carrying.

“You know what I think?” she murmurs.

“What?”

“I think you’re finally somewhere safe enough to stop surviving all the time.”

My shoulders loosen before I can stop them, and my hand tightens against her waist.

Surviving has always been instinctive. I know how to build something out of nothing. How to enter a failing business and find every structural weakness. How to make myself necessary.

Safety is harder. Safety means believing I can stay even when I’m not actively proving my worth.

Hadley has never once asked me to earn my place beside her. That’s the part I’m still learning to trust.

“You make me want impossible things,” I admit.

Hadley smiles. “Like what?”

I stare out toward the water for a long second.

“I didn’t even realize I’d stopped letting myself want things.” My laugh is quiet. “Not things I could buy. Things that could disappear.”

I glance back at her.

“People. A home.”

I shake my head once.

“A future that wasn’t built around having one foot out the door.”

I look down at our hands.

“Then somewhere along the way”—my thumb brushes over her knuckles—“you made staying feel a whole lot less frightening.”

“A home?” Hadley asks.

“Not a temporary place,” I continue. “Not an apartment above a jobsite.”