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That meant that she was letting herself curl up in a chair while it rained outside, and lose herself in a book. Or sometimes just nap with the sound of the waves to soothe her. She took herself on long, beautiful hikes along the shore, or in the woods along the headlands. And she couldn’t remember the last time in her life that she’d had the time or really the ability to just...let herself trust fall into whatever was happening.

I can’t believe you’re not here in the teacher’s lounge with me right now, smelling Daniel Mckay’s fish dinner, her friend and former colleague Marissa texted her one morning while she was having her favorite breakfast at the Salty Dog. This is cosmically unfair, though of course, hope you’re having a magical time etc etc

Daniel Mckay had been teaching sixth grade since the dawn of time, and either chose not to understand the effects of microwaved smelly dinners or was actively engaged in warfare. Hard to say.

Raemy grinned down at her phone, and suddenly missed her old life. The rhythm of the teaching life, and her students who she not only got to teach when they were in her class, but got to watch grow up as they moved through the grades. Sometimes, depending on the high school they went to, they came back after they graduated. She’d seen her first crop of third graders do that this past year, and it had felt like they’d all come full circle.

She missed going out with her teacher friends. Even the school events, that were always hilarious, because even if they were terrible they made for good stories later. She missed the stuffy principal, the possibly deranged fifth-grade teacher who had made an enemy of everyone in the school district, and all the parents who had been so kind to her. Not so much the ones who hadn’t been.

But as she sat there at what had become her usual table, eating her little omelet that Jeremiah whipped up just for her with her toast buttered just right, she realized that she could miss all of that and still not want to go back.

She had loved her life in Missouri. Then she had been a zombie who just survived her life in Missouri. And now she lived on the edge of the country with the Pacific in one direction and mysterious, lush, misty woods that met the water.

We can pretend it’s all deeply unmagical, Raemy texted back. Like my ugly walk this morning. And she dropped a picture of the beach at low tide, right at sunrise.

It might as well have been a painting. It looked otherworldly, the rocks reflecting in the pools of glassy water, the sky lit up in pinks and peaches and the hint of purple.

I hate you, Marissa texted back.

Raemy sent her an emoji with a halo, and set her phone down, so she could enjoy her meal while watching the usual gruff dance of the men coming in and out of the kitchen. And more specifically, the Noah Kendrick of it all.

Because the best part of Wild Rose Point was obviously Noah.

She didn’t go running with him in the mornings, because she wasn’t sufficiently masochistic, but she did like a walk to start the day. If she went early enough—and some mornings she was too busy sleeping off what he’d done to her the night before to wake up when he did—she would see him out there, running with all of his usual intensity on the sand. No matter the state of the tide, he was always there.

He looked tiny next to the huge rocks. He wasn’t made of volcanic basalt. And yet the truth was, he loomed larger in her life every day.

She usually came to the diner for her breakfast, though she was beginning to feel badly about it because she wasn’t allowed to pay. No matter what she ate, or didn’t eat, or even if Noah was visible behind the counter—every single one of the vets would tell her that her money wasn’t good at the Salty Dog and refuse to engage further.

Raemy learned all of their names, and many of them told her their stories. Some of them were William’s age, more or less, and it felt like a kind of therapy to talk with them and think about what William might have been like if he’d come home and had needed to figure out his life. She could see him ending up here. He could so easily have been one of these men who had to sort out how to interact in the real world again, one painful step at a time.

Tank was her favorite, and not only because he’d introduced her to the glory that was his salted honey pie.

Raemy waxed rhapsodic over it, babbling things about how it tasted like the best caramel of all time, and how was it possible that she’d lived her whole life in the Midwest—where, everyone knew, butter and lard and endless desserts were a crucial part of the culture—and had never tasted it?

Tank only inclined his head. “It was my mother’s recipe,” he would tell her every time, sounding rough and serious because that was always how he sounded. Sometimes she thought he liked it, because he weeded out people who couldn’t handle him at arm’s length, so no need to worry about getting closer. “A family secret.”

“I suppose all families have secrets,” she mused, one time he told her that. “But I always think that’s silly. Not when it’s pie. Or really, any other recipe, because I would obviously die before I told you how my mother makes her signature carrot souffle for Thanksgiving. But the other secrets, the painful ones that you can’t serve for dessert—they’re the bad ones.”

The big man had been standing at the counter, writing the daily baked good selection on his small chalkboard. “There are two kinds of secrets. The kind of secrets you keep from other people because you think they can’t handle it. And the ones you keep from yourself, because, deep down, you know the truth is worse.”

And maybe he’d already known that Noah was coming into the diner behind her, but it seemed meaningful when she turned and found him there.

“What are you two talking about?” Noah asked, in his usual grumpy, surly, ridiculously and endlessly hot way.

Not that she was a goner where he was concerned or anything.

“Secrets,” Tank said, helpfully. He aimed a grin that could only be called shit-eating directly at Noah. “More specifically, the ones a person keeps from himself.”

“The only secret I’m keeping is how much I’d like you to fuck off into the sea,” Noah replied, in what was almost a happy tone of voice, for him. Then he smirked at Tank. “Oh, wait. That’s not a secret at all.”

And he didn’t kiss Raemy in the diner. He didn’t play with her hair or trace patterns on her thigh with his big hands. But she didn’t think that any of the men who worked there, or any of the locals who frequented the place, were at all fooled by his restraint.

Because even if this wasn’t a small town where everybody knew everybody else’s business and pretended not to, to be polite, surely they could all see the way he looked at her.

As if he could burn her up with a glance.

Raemy didn’t like to think how exactly she looked back at him, or what it meant, because she was sure they could all see that too.