Tag: emotional romance

Chapter 1: The Return to Willow Bay

The town was still as she remembered it—only quieter, as if it had aged with her absence.

Eva Hartley’s SUV rumbled off the highway and onto the narrow coastal road that led to Willow Bay, tires chewing up gravel, windows fogged from the chill creeping in from the ocean. The wind carried the sharp scent of pine and brine, and through the trees, the Pacific roared like a beast just beyond the bend. She hadn’t planned to come back here. Not really. But plans had a way of fracturing when everything else did.

As the cottage came into view, Eva’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. The wooden slats of the place—her grandmother’s house—were grayer than she remembered, the paint long surrendered to salt and sun. The porch sagged at the corner. A tangle of honeysuckle vines had overtaken the trellis, wild and unruly. It looked like the house had been waiting for her return and decided to give up halfway through.

She parked, engine ticking in protest, and sat in silence.

Three weeks ago, she’d been in Morocco, chasing the blue light of the Rif Mountains with her camera, her fingers calloused from shutters and tripods, her head swimming in the high of getting the perfect shot. Two weeks ago, she’d been dumped—publicly and bitterly—by the man who had shared both her bed and her bookings. Jonah had accused her of caring more about landscapes than people, of chasing places to avoid herself. And he hadn’t been wrong.

Now, she was thirty-two, heartbreak fresh and unprocessed, with thousands of miles behind her and nowhere else to run.

The fog pressed in, wrapping the world in gauze as she climbed out of the car. The cottage door creaked open, and the scent of old cedar, dried lavender, and forgotten time reached out to meet her. Inside, dust floated in lazy spirals through pale morning light. The furniture was covered in sheets, like ghosts she’d need to exorcise one by one.

Eva wandered through the rooms in silence.

The photo still hung above the fireplace—her grandparents at the beach, her grandfather laughing as her grandmother held a fish up with pride. She traced the edge of the frame with her fingertips. The world was smaller then, slower. It had room for things like porch swings and handwritten letters. She wondered if she could fit back into it.

After unpacking the essentials—laptop, camera gear, flannel shirts she’d stolen from Jonah during the good months—Eva wandered down to the beach.

The tide was low, leaving behind streaks of kelp and driftwood littered along the sand like bones. The wind pulled at her scarf, whistling through the tall grass that bordered the dunes. Here, the sea didn’t crash; it sighed, weary and ancient, waves folding into themselves like breath.

She crouched to snap a photo—muscle memory guiding her fingers as she framed a sun-bleached log half-buried in the surf. The shutter clicked, and something in her chest loosened, if only a little.

It was only after she straightened that she realized someone was jogging along the beach, a golden retriever bounding ahead of him.

The man was broad-shouldered and tall, his hoodie damp from mist, running shoes flecked with sand. His stride was easy, practiced, confident in the way men often were after years spent in their bodies. The dog barked once, chasing a gull, before circling back. Eva turned away before the jogger could get close.

She didn’t want to be seen. Not yet. Not by anyone who might remember.

Back at the house, she brewed a pot of coffee and pulled an old blanket from the cedar chest. She sat on the porch swing, mug cradled in her hands, and let the steam fog her glasses.

The town was quiet.

No honking taxis. No early morning tourists. No glowing screens. Only the hum of wind and the far-off echo of gulls.

She didn’t realize how much she’d missed silence until now.

---

Later that afternoon, she drove into town. The main strip of Willow Bay was a tidy stretch of storefronts—quirky signage, locally made soaps, a yarn shop named “Knotty by Nature,” and a bookstore that always smelled like cinnamon. She parked in front of the coffee shop, Marlin & Bean, which hadn’t changed much in ten years. The same bell jingled overhead as she stepped inside.

The warmth hit her immediately—roasted beans, vanilla syrup, and fresh pastries. A few tables were occupied by laptop users and retirees. Behind the counter stood a barista with dyed teal hair, a constellation of piercings, and an expression somewhere between bored and curious.

“Welcome to Marlin & Bean,” they said, brushing a crumb off the counter. “What can I get you?”

Eva hesitated. “Do you still have that honey cardamom latte?”

The barista blinked. “You’re from here.”

“Sort of.”

Their eyes narrowed. “You’re Eva Hartley.”

She smiled faintly. “Guilty.”

“Class of…?”

“’09.”

“No shit,” they said, leaning forward. “You dated Caleb Moore, didn’t you?”

Eva stiffened.

She hadn’t heard that name out loud in over a decade, yet somehow, it still held the weight of summer nights and open windows. Of baseball games and lake swims and first touches under the bleachers.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I did.”

The barista grinned. “Well, he’s still here. Coaches baseball now. High school P.E. teacher. Divorced, I think. Kid’s cute as hell, if that’s your thing. He’s got this whole rugged ex-athlete thing going. DILF vibes.”

Eva let out a breathy laugh despite herself. “Good to know.”

They slid her drink across the counter. “Welcome back, Eva.”

As she turned to leave, she felt every eye in the room subtly shift toward her, curiosity hidden behind coffee cups and screen glare. She was the returning ghost. The girl who got out.

---

It was only a few hours later when she ran into him.

She was at the gas station on the edge of town, scraping bug guts off her windshield with a grimace, when a familiar rumble pulled into the space beside her. A beat-up Chevy pickup, navy blue, tires crusted with beach grit.

The door opened.

And there he was.

Caleb Moore.

Time hadn’t ruined him. If anything, it had made him into something sharper, stronger. His once-boyish features had aged into something that carried weight—strong jaw, slight lines at the corners of his eyes, a beard trimmed close. He wore a faded gray hoodie with Willow Bay Baseball stitched across the chest, sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms she remembered too well.

He hadn’t seen her yet.

He went inside, came out a minute later with a six-pack and a bottle of Gatorade. When his gaze swept the lot, it landed on her.

He froze.

For a moment, neither of them moved. The wind stilled. The world tilted.

“…Eva?” His voice cracked her name in half, like it didn’t quite believe it belonged in his mouth.

She nodded once. “Hey, Caleb.”

His eyes studied her like a puzzle he hadn’t expected to see again. “I thought you moved to…where was it? New York?”

“Then L.A. Then the world, for a while.”

“You’re back.”

She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Temporarily. Maybe.”

He smiled then, but it was laced with uncertainty. “Well… welcome home.”

And just like that, he climbed into his truck and drove off, taillights vanishing into the curve of the road like a memory retreating into mist.

Eva stood there for a long time, hand still on the pump, the cold wind lifting her coat as her heart thudded beneath her ribs.

---

That night, the rain came in sheets.

She lit candles and wrapped herself in flannel, a book open on her lap, unread. Outside, the sea howled, but inside was still—warm wood floors, kettle steam, and a heaviness she couldn’t shake.

She tried editing photos but couldn’t focus.

She pulled up an old album instead—photos she’d taken the summer before she left. Willow Bay in soft evening light. The dock. The baseball field. Caleb.

One image stopped her cold.

He was standing in the middle of the field, glove in hand, squinting into the sun. His smile had been unguarded. The kind you gave someone you loved.

She closed the laptop.

The clock ticked. The wind rattled the windows.

She stepped outside barefoot, the porch slick with rain. The sea stretched out in front of her, endless and unknowable. In the distance, the lighthouse blinked in intervals, steady and patient.

“Caleb,” she whispered, just to hear the name in the night.

She didn’t know if she’d come back for herself, for healing, or for something she couldn’t name. But she knew the tide had shifted.

And something was pulling her back out into the deep.

---

Chapter 2: A Familiar Stranger

The morning fog clung low over Willow Bay, veiling the shoreline like a whispered secret. From her bedroom window, Eva watched as the mist curled through the dunes, turning the horizon into a pale, endless smudge. The silence was unsettling. She wasn’t used to this kind of quiet. It wasn’t peaceful—it was honest. The kind of quiet that didn’t let you hide behind plane tickets and packed itineraries.

She dressed in a soft knit sweater and jeans worn thin at the knees, grabbed her camera, and walked barefoot down the narrow path to the beach, her boots dangling from one hand. The sand was cold, damp, and strewn with seaweed, pebbles, and the curled husks of washed-up shells. The tide was going out, leaving a mirror of saltwater stretching out beneath the clouds.

She raised her camera. Framed a tangle of driftwood tangled in netting. Clicked.

The act soothed something in her, but not much. The familiar weight of the camera in her hands felt heavier than usual, like it knew she’d stopped believing in what she was capturing. Still, she moved slowly along the shoreline, shooting without thinking—ripples in the sand, abandoned crab traps, a single rusted buoy caught on the rocks.

“Didn’t expect to see you this early.”

She froze mid-frame.

That voice.

Eva turned, already knowing who it would be.

Caleb Moore stood ten feet away, hoodie pulled up, sweatpants cuffed at his ankles. He was holding a leash, though the golden retriever at the end of it was already halfway up the beach, tail wagging furiously, nose buried in sea foam.

“Morning,” Eva said, lowering the camera.

“You still shoot?”

“Every day.”

He nodded, watching her.

“You always walk here with your dog?” she asked, keeping her voice casual.

“Most mornings,” he replied. “Charlie drags me out before the sun’s up. If I try to sleep in, he howls like I murdered someone.”

Eva smiled despite herself. “He always was dramatic.”

Caleb gave a low laugh. “You remember him?”

“He was a puppy when I left. I think he peed on my suitcase.”

“He still does that. On most things.”

She looked down at the camera, checking her settings more out of habit than need. The pause between them was long and taut, stretched like the space between lightning and thunder.

“You look…” Caleb began, then stopped.

Eva glanced up. “Older?”

“I was gonna say ‘good.’ But sure, older too. Guess we both are.”

“You still live in town?” she asked.

He nodded. “Never left.”

“You like it?”

He took a moment to answer, then shrugged. “It’s home. That hasn’t changed.”

It hadn’t changed. But he had.

The boy she remembered had been all restless energy and ambition—always gripping a baseball like it was a ticket out. His body had been lean, a runner’s build. Now, there was strength to him, bulk earned through coaching drills and long days on the field. He carried himself differently. He didn’t fidget. Didn’t fill the air with noise. There was a stillness to him now, and something harder beneath the surface.

“You’re really back?” he asked, nodding toward the camera. “Or just passing through?”

Eva hesitated. “I’m here for a while. Staying at my grandmother’s cottage.”

“She left it to you?”

“Yeah.”

He gave another short nod, like it made sense, but didn’t say anything else. Charlie came bounding up the sand, wet and panting, tail slapping Caleb’s legs before darting toward Eva.

She bent down to scratch behind the dog’s ears, grateful for the distraction.

“So…” she said, glancing up at him, “you coach now?”

“Varsity baseball and P.E.,” he said. “Wasn’t the plan, but the universe has a way of laughing at those.”

She straightened. “You were going to go pro.”

“Yeah. Got close. Double-A with the Mariners’ farm team for two years. Tore my shoulder. Pitching arm was never the same.”

Eva winced. “I didn’t know.”

“You were gone,” he said simply.

His tone wasn’t accusatory. Just factual. Still, it landed hard.

“I’m sorry.”

He looked at her, really looked at her for the first time since they’d met eyes at the gas station.

“What for?” he asked, quiet.

Eva didn’t have an answer. Or maybe she had too many.

“I should…” she gestured vaguely toward the dunes. “Keep walking. Get some more shots.”

Caleb nodded, leash now slack in his hand. “Yeah. I should finish the loop.”

They stood there a second too long, as if both were waiting for the other to say something else.

Instead, she turned and walked back toward the path, feeling his eyes on her until the fog swallowed her whole.

---

The next day, Eva sat in the corner of the bookstore, flipping through a photography book she didn’t need. Her laptop sat closed in her bag. Her phone—still lit with unread messages from clients and Jonah alike—remained on Do Not Disturb.

She sipped slowly at her lavender tea and tried not to think about Caleb Moore.

Unsuccessfully.

She didn’t like how easily he still occupied space in her mind. How one look from him—older, sadder, heavier—had ignited something old and raw in her. She’d thought she’d buried all that under years of departures and new beginnings. But grief had memory, and love, apparently, had roots.

“Excuse me,” came a voice from beside her. “You’re Eva Hartley, right?”

Eva looked up into the face of a woman about her age, with wild red curls and a baby strapped to her chest.

“I am.”

“I’m Darcy Kinney—well, Darcy Paxton now. We were in English class together sophomore year. You moved away after graduation.”

Eva smiled, vaguely remembering Darcy’s affinity for writing fanfiction and constantly doodling wolves in the margins of her notebook.

“I remember you,” she said honestly.

“Welcome back,” Darcy said, shifting the baby higher. “You doing okay?”

“As okay as one can be coming home after ten years.”

Darcy laughed. “Well, it’s good to see you. You should come to the Harvest Festival this weekend. Everyone’s going to be there. Caleb’s helping organize it.”

There it was again. His name. Like a compass needle pointing her backward.

“I’ll think about it,” Eva said.

Darcy smiled knowingly. “You should. He asked about you after he saw you yesterday. Said you hadn’t changed a bit.”

Eva didn’t reply. She watched Darcy leave the shop, the baby gurgling on her shoulder, and turned back to her book with trembling hands.

She didn’t know what scared her more: the idea of Caleb still caring—or the fact that part of her still wanted him to.

---

Two days later, she went.

The festival was held in the school gymnasium and the adjacent parking lot, now strung with twinkling lights and lined with food trucks and local vendor booths. Children ran between hay bales stacked like castles. Folk music drifted from the speakers, blending with laughter and the scent of kettle corn.

Eva moved slowly through the crowd, camera slung at her side. She snapped a few candid shots—a girl with face paint chasing her brother, an old couple slow-dancing near the cider stand. Everyone seemed to recognize her, but few said anything beyond a smile or nod.

And then she saw him.

Caleb stood by the raffle booth, clipboard in hand, talking with a group of parents. He wore a navy button-down rolled to the elbows, jeans, and that same quiet confidence. He was laughing at something—genuine, warm—and the sight made something in her chest tighten.

When he looked up and saw her, the moment shifted.

Their eyes met. The noise of the festival dulled, as if the entire night held its breath.

He excused himself from the group and walked toward her.

“You came,” he said, voice low.

“Darcy said it was a town tradition. I figured I’d better embrace the small-town nostalgia.”

“You look good in it.”

She glanced down at her flannel-lined jacket and jeans. “Thanks.”

“Still taking pictures?”

She nodded, then gestured at the camera. “It’s either this or talk to people.”

“I always liked your photos,” he said. “You made things look real.”

Eva looked at him. “Not beautiful?”

He smiled. “Beautiful because they were real.”

She felt that like a hand against bare skin.

They stood in silence for a beat before he nodded toward the cider truck.

“You want something to drink?”

“Sure.”

He returned with two steaming cups and handed her one. Their fingers brushed. Neither pulled away.

“So,” she said, blowing into the cup. “You live here. Coach. What else?”

“Divorced,” he said plainly. “No kids. Just me and Charlie.”

Eva tilted her head. “I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

“You were always the guy who wanted the full picture. Wife. Kids. Little league Saturdays.”

“I did,” he said, his gaze steady. “And then I lost the big dream. The shoulder. The scouts. Thought I’d settle for a smaller version. Turns out you can’t force forever on the wrong person.”

She didn’t know what to say to that.

“I followed your work,” he added, softer now. “Your gallery show in London. The frozen lake series in Iceland. I saw you in a travel magazine once, sitting on a rooftop in Santorini. You looked… untouchable.”

Eva looked away. “I felt hollow.”

“Why?”

She took a sip. Let the cider burn a slow trail down her throat.

“Because none of it meant anything without someone to share it with.”

When she looked at him again, his expression had changed. Gone was the cautious civility. What remained was something deeper. Older. Familiar.

She was about to say something—anything—when the lights above flickered, then dimmed. The music changed to a slow instrumental. Couples began to drift toward the makeshift dance floor between the booths.

“Dance with me,” Caleb said.

She hesitated.

“I don’t know if I remember how,” she admitted.

His smile was crooked. “I’ll remind you.”

He took her hand.

And as he pulled her into him, warm and solid and so achingly known, Eva realized that she hadn’t just come back to Willow Bay.

She was already sinking back into it.

---

Chapter 3: Porchlight Memories

The next morning, the scent of rain hung heavy in the air.

Eva lay in bed beneath a quilt that still smelled faintly of lavender and sea salt. The cottage walls creaked around her like old bones settling. Through the window, gulls wheeled overhead, their cries sharp against the low, cloudy sky. Her thoughts—tangled and relentless—had kept her up half the night.

She hadn’t expected the dance. Hadn’t expected how easily Caleb’s hand would fit in hers again, or how instinctively her body had curved toward his. The song had been slow, forgettable, but the way he’d looked at her—like she was the only person in the room—had seared through her.

They hadn’t kissed. They hadn’t even lingered once the music faded.

But there had been a moment. One long, breathless second where his thumb traced the edge of her wrist and her whole body thrummed like a struck wire.

Now, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. About him.

About what might happen if they kept standing this close to something unfinished.

---

She didn’t plan to go to the high school that afternoon. It just… happened.

It started with a walk—camera in hand, boots crunching on rain-damp gravel. The town, slick with drizzle, was sleepy and gray, the kind of late-autumn weather that made everything feel like it was waiting. She passed the old grocery store, the bakery that still sold the best blackberry pie she’d ever tasted, and eventually found herself standing in front of Willow Bay High.

The building looked the same.

Red brick walls. Faded banners hanging limp against the gymnasium siding. The same rusted bell above the entrance. She stepped onto the front walk and stared at the doors, half expecting to hear the distant echo of a tardy bell.

She remembered standing here at seventeen—arms crossed, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder, Caleb’s hoodie zipped to her chin. She remembered him pressing a kiss to her temple, whispering “You’re gonna be amazing” as she boarded the bus for the photography intensive that would pull her farther and farther away.

And now, over a decade later, she was walking through those doors again—older, unsure, and full of echoes.

Inside, the front office was painted a cheerful but clinical beige. A secretary behind the counter looked up and offered a practiced smile.

“Can I help you?”

Eva cleared her throat. “I’m Eva Hartley. I used to go here. I was hoping to get some photos for a personal project—small town return type of thing. I figured I’d ask permission first.”

The secretary blinked. “You’re the Eva Hartley?”

Eva tensed. “That depends.”

“The photographer! We use your images in our media class! You did that campaign for National Geographic, right?”

She smiled modestly. “That was a while ago.”

“Well,” the secretary said, practically buzzing, “Coach Moore’s running practice right now in the gym if you want shots of something local. You should say hi.”

Eva nodded politely, though her stomach twisted. She thanked the woman and followed the now-familiar hallways.

The school smelled exactly as it used to—floor polish, wet sneakers, and old books. Every turn was a breadcrumb leading her deeper into memory. Lockers lined the halls like soldiers. Some of them had dents she swore were from her class.

Then came the sound of bouncing balls and shouted drills.

She pushed the gym doors open quietly and slipped inside.

Caleb was on the court, clipboard in hand, barking instructions to a pack of boys in baseball jackets doing footwork drills. The bleachers were half-pulled out, and the fluorescent lights cast a soft halo over everything. He hadn’t seen her yet.

Eva stayed in the shadows, lifting her camera. She zoomed in, capturing the firm line of his jaw as he called out a correction, the curve of his hand when he clapped a student’s shoulder. He was patient, commanding without being cruel. She caught a moment when he smiled—genuine and wide, making a boy who had just tripped laugh instead of shrink.

She snapped the shutter and lowered the camera.

Caleb turned at the sound.

His eyes landed on her. Recognition flickered fast across his face, but he didn’t react. Instead, he barked a final command to the boys.

“Three laps and hit the locker room. Go!”

They scattered.

He walked over slowly, wiping sweat from his forehead with the hem of his shirt—just enough to flash the carved lines of his stomach before it dropped again.

Eva didn’t comment. Neither did he.

“You stalking me now?” Caleb asked, one eyebrow lifted.

She gave a half-smile. “I was invited.”

“Hmm. Let me guess. Pam in the front office?”

“She remembered me.”

“Everyone remembers you.”

He leaned against the wall beside her, arms crossed, close enough that she could feel the heat rising off his skin. His chest rose and fell, still heavy from exertion.

She looked at him sideways. “You were good out there.”

“They listen better than I did at that age.”

“You always listened,” she said. “You just pretended you didn’t.”

He chuckled softly.

“You still taking photos of everything?”

“Not everything,” she said. “Just what feels like it matters.”

Caleb nodded slowly. “So why’d you take a picture of me?”

She met his gaze. “Because you mattered once.”

The air thickened.

He studied her for a moment. His expression unreadable. Then he stepped forward—not quite closing the distance, but close enough that her breath caught.

“And now?” he asked.

She licked her lips. “Now, I don’t know.”

He nodded again, the faintest muscle ticking in his jaw.

“I’ve got another team coming in ten,” he said finally. “You can stay if you want.”

Eva hesitated, then shook her head. “I got what I needed.”

“Yeah?” he asked, voice low. “You sure?”

Her heart stuttered. “No.”

They held the moment like a match between them—burning slow, dangerous.

Then she turned and walked away.

---

Back at the cottage, she dumped her memory card into her laptop and scrolled through the photos she’d taken. Most were sharp. Clean. Lit by the cold, clinical fluorescence of the gymnasium. But one stopped her cold.

It was Caleb mid-laugh, his mouth open, eyes lit from within. The kind of laugh that came from the gut. Unposed. Unarmored.

She stared at the image for a long time, then zoomed in, catching the sweat at his temples, the flush of his skin, the curve of his lip.

Her fingers hovered over the trackpad.

Then she closed the laptop and walked into the bathroom.

---

She stripped slowly, unpeeling her clothes one layer at a time until she stood naked in the small, steam-fogged space. The shower groaned to life, water rushing hot and steady.

As she stepped under the spray, her mind betrayed her—conjuring the memory of Caleb’s voice, the way his eyes had held hers in the gym, the sound of her name on his tongue.

She pressed her palms flat to the tile.

Her breath quickened. The water slicked over her skin, sliding between her breasts, over the curve of her hips. She closed her eyes and let her fingers drift lower, each motion slow and deliberate.

She imagined his hands instead.

Rough. Wide. Familiar.

She moved her hips into the rhythm she remembered from the nights they’d fumbled together in the dark—bodies young, desperate, trembling.

She bit her lip to keep quiet.

The heat climbed inside her, coiling like something starved and newly awakened. Her back arched. She chased the memory of him—not what he’d said, but how he’d looked at her. Like she was something worth wanting again.

When she came, it was silent and shaking, her body folding in on itself like it didn’t quite believe what it was feeling.

After, she stood under the water for a long time, letting it wash away everything but the ache.

---

That night, she sat on the porch in a wool sweater and nothing else, blanket over her lap, wine glass in hand. The sea was restless, breaking against the rocks in fits and sighs.

Her phone buzzed.

She glanced at the screen.

Unknown Number:
You left your lens cap in the gym. Want to come get it?

She stared at the message.

There was no name. Just that. Casual. Teasing.

She didn’t have to guess.

Eva picked up the wineglass, finished it in a single swallow, and let the wind decide what she’d do next.

---

Chapter 4: The Old Field and the Fence

The lens cap sat on Caleb’s desk like a breadcrumb. Small. Plastic. Perfectly circular. She hadn’t even realized she’d left it behind.

Eva stared at it, then at the message again.

You left your lens cap in the gym. Want to come get it?

No emojis. No punctuation. Just those twelve words, soaked in subtext.

She should have let it sit. Waited until morning. But something inside her—reckless, aching, curious—refused.

So she put on her coat, slipped into boots without socks, and stepped out into the night.

---

The school parking lot was dark except for a lone light above the gym doors. The fog had thickened again, low and ghostlike, as though the town itself were holding its breath.

She rang the buzzer once.

The door clicked open a few seconds later.

Caleb stood there in a white T-shirt and black joggers, barefoot on the linoleum. His hair was damp—just showered. The scent of cedar soap and warm skin drifted toward her.

“Hey,” he said.

His voice was low, a rasp in the quiet.

Eva stepped inside. Her breath fogged slightly in the cold entryway, but the air grew warmer as he led her through the now-deserted hallways toward his office beside the gym.

The silence between them pulsed—not awkward, but expectant. Like the seconds before a lightning strike.

He opened the door and gestured inside.

There it was—her lens cap, resting beside a laptop, whistle, and a thermos that probably held terrible school coffee.

“Thanks,” she said, stepping past him.

Her arm brushed his chest—barely—but the contact still sent a ripple down her spine. He didn’t move.

“Didn’t want you losing your focus,” he murmured behind her.

She turned, holding the cap in one hand. “I have backups.”

He nodded. “But you liked this one.”

She raised a brow. “You remember my lens cap preferences?”

“I remember everything,” he said, and for a moment, the room felt very small.

The air between them tightened.

Eva glanced at the desk, then at him. “You keep this place clean.”

He shrugged. “I’m here enough. It helps if it doesn’t smell like sixteen-year-old socks.”

She stepped toward the small window. Rain had begun tapping at the glass, soft and rhythmic. She could feel him behind her without turning. His presence was heat on her spine, his breath a warm suggestion.

“It’s weird,” she said quietly.

“What is?”

“Being back. You. This. Us.”

“We’re not an ‘us.’”

“Right,” she said. “I forgot.”

He didn’t laugh.

Instead, she felt his fingers graze her forearm.

Just a touch. The barest hint of skin to skin.

But it was enough.

Eva turned.

Caleb was closer than he’d been—close enough that she could see the flecks of hazel in his eyes, the way the years had deepened the curve of his mouth, made him something harder, rougher.

She searched his face.

“You’re not the boy I left.”

He shook his head. “No. I’m not.”

“And I’m not the girl you kissed behind the bleachers.”

“God, no,” he said, voice almost reverent.

The silence between them thickened. Neither stepped away.

“I’m not looking for complicated,” she said, softly.

He didn’t flinch. “I’m not asking for anything.”

But the look in his eyes betrayed him—hungry, hesitant, haunted.

Eva reached out. Her fingers found the hem of his shirt.

She didn’t tug. Just touched.

“I didn’t come here for this,” she said.

“Tell me to stop,” he replied.

She didn’t.

Caleb’s hand found her waist—warm and wide. Not rushing, not claiming, just there. Grounded.

Her breath stuttered.

He leaned in slowly, giving her time to pull away. When she didn’t, his lips brushed her temple, then her cheek, lingering just below her ear.

She felt it—not just the heat of his mouth, but the memory in it. The familiarity. The years between them evaporated.

His fingers trailed along the curve of her hip, beneath her coat. Still outside her clothes, still polite, but barely.

Eva turned her face, met his eyes.

He was watching her like she was a photo coming into focus—patient, breath held, waiting to see what developed.

She leaned up, pressing her mouth to his—tentative, testing.

He kissed her back slowly. Thoroughly.

No rush. No pressure.

Just the slow melt of lips rediscovering shape.

They parted with a breath. Her hands had curled into his shirt.

Caleb’s voice, when he spoke, was low and husky. “You’re shaking.”

Eva hadn’t noticed. “I don’t know what this is.”

“We don’t have to name it.”

“We can’t pretend it’s nothing.”

“I’m not pretending,” he said, brushing her cheek with his thumb.

“You’re dangerous,” she murmured.

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “So are you.”

Another kiss. This one deeper. Hungrier.

She stepped back.

“Not tonight,” she whispered.

Caleb nodded, swallowing hard. “Okay.”

Eva pulled away, grabbed her lens cap from the desk, and gave him a look that left nothing ambiguous.

Then she walked out of his office—heart racing, skin humming, breath stolen.

---

Back at the cottage, the rain had picked up.

She stripped slowly in the bedroom, her skin still warm from his touch. There had been no promises. No declarations. Just the kiss, and the gravity that still seemed to tether them together.

She lay in bed naked beneath the covers, windows fogged from her breath, stormlight flickering against the walls.

Sleep came late.

But when it did, she dreamed of a hand sliding beneath her sweater, of a mouth finding the place below her collarbone.

And of a voice in the dark whispering, You’re still the only thing that ever felt real.

---

The next morning, Eva stood in the kitchen pouring coffee when her phone buzzed.

A message.

Caleb Moore:
Didn’t sleep much. Thinking about your mouth. And the way you didn’t say goodbye.

She read it three times before replying.

Eva Hartley:
I was afraid if I stayed, I’d never leave.

Three dots. Then silence.

Then finally:

Caleb:
Maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.

She stared at the screen until the coffee went cold in her hands.

---

Chapter 5: Coffee, Silence, and Ghosts

The wind arrived like a breath caught in the lungs of the sea—sharp, full of intent, and colder than it should have been for October.

Eva sat at the window with her knees drawn to her chest, watching as the gray horizon bled into darker tones. The waves had turned violent in the last hour, smashing against the rocks with a kind of primal rage, spitting white foam onto the dunes like froth from a bitten mouth. She could hear the gusts battering the roof, felt the occasional shudder in the walls of the cottage. Old bones under pressure.

The lights flickered for the first time just after five p.m.

By six, they were gone completely.

Eva lit the candles stored in the bottom kitchen drawer—fat pillars that smelled like old citrus and pine—and set them in glass holders across the living room, their flames bowing in the breeze sneaking through the windows. Shadows trembled across the walls.

She had expected this. The Oregon coast was not known for kindness in autumn.

Still, there was something about this storm that felt different. Not worse. Just… personal.

She layered on a thick cardigan and wool socks, brewed tea over the gas stove, and curled into the old armchair with a blanket and a book she didn’t plan to open.

And of course, her mind kept drifting to him.

To the message he’d sent last night. To the one she had sent in return.

To the silence since.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected after her reply—maybe a call, maybe a knock, maybe another line that tread the edge of caution and longing.

Instead, she’d gotten stillness. The kind of silence that sounded like a dare.

She’d tried to work—editing, organizing the flood of recent photos on her hard drive—but her fingers hovered above the trackpad without commitment. Her gaze kept snagging on the photo she’d captured in the gym—the one of Caleb mid-laugh, his eyes alight.

Unposed.

Open.

Dangerous.

---

The knock came just after dark.

Three sharp raps—harder than politeness, but not quite urgent.

Eva stiffened, candlelight flickering against the walls as the wind howled just behind the door. She moved quietly, her boots soft against the old wood floor, her hand brushing against the doorknob.

She peered through the narrow window.

Caleb.

He stood with his hood down, rain streaking through his hair, cheeks flushed from wind. His jacket clung to his frame, dark with moisture, and in his left hand was a small canvas bag, its handles taut in his grip.

She opened the door.

“What are you doing out in this?” she asked, voice barely above the wind.

“I could ask you the same,” he said. His tone was even, but his eyes flicked over her quickly—her tangled hair, the blanket still wrapped over her shoulders. “You’ve got no power. I figured the place might be leaking.”

“It is,” she admitted. “Only a little. Bedroom corner.”

He held up the bag. “Soup. Bread. Batteries. A flashlight. And chocolate.”

Her lips quirked. “Did you just storm-court me?”

He gave a small shrug. “Seemed like the polite thing to do.”

Eva stepped aside. “Come in.”

Caleb wiped his boots on the mat and stripped off the rain-slick jacket in the entryway, revealing a long-sleeved thermal shirt clinging to his torso. His hair was damp and curling slightly at the ends, the drops of water sliding down his neck making her throat dry.

She tried not to stare.

He handed her the bag. Their fingers brushed. The heat in that moment had nothing to do with the storm outside.

She took the food into the kitchen and pulled down bowls, the motion automatic. The flicker of candlelight danced off the windows and glass cabinets like firelight in a dream.

He stood behind her, not crowding, just present.

“I forgot how quiet it gets when the power’s out,” he said.

“You hear everything,” she murmured.

“Like what?”

“The wind. The floorboards. Your own heart.”

She turned.

They were close again—always closer than seemed fair. Like something invisible kept pulling them toward each other despite all logic, all hesitation.

Caleb’s eyes moved over her face slowly, deliberately, as if searching for something left unsaid.

“I heard it last night too,” he said, voice low. “Your heart.”

Eva said nothing.

She turned back to the stove, ladled the soup into two bowls, and brought them to the table. She lit another candle between them. Outside, the wind screeched against the eaves like something alive.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. The soup was rich, spiced, filling.

“You made this?” she asked finally.

“Borrowed a recipe from the lunch lady. She’s terrifying, but she can cook.”

She laughed softly. “God. Is it bad I actually miss the cafeteria grilled cheese?”

He smiled. “Only if you miss the powdered milk too.”

They fell into an easy rhythm—nostalgia and warmth easing the space between them. Their knees nearly touched under the table. At one point, her foot brushed his. He didn’t pull away.

When their bowls were empty, she gathered the dishes, washed them slowly by candlelight. Caleb joined her, towel in hand, drying each bowl without speaking.

It felt natural. Intimate in a quiet, devastating way.

“Eva,” he said after the last spoon was dry.

She turned.

He wasn’t looking at the towel. He was looking at her.

At her mouth. Her eyes. Her chest rising with each breath.

She didn’t move.

“You shouldn’t be alone out here in a storm.”

“I’ve weathered worse,” she said.

“Not talking about the weather.”

The silence between them turned thick.

She stepped closer. “Then what are you talking about?”

Caleb set the towel down. Reached for her—slowly, fingers grazing the side of her face.

She leaned into his palm.

His thumb traced her cheekbone, then the corner of her mouth.

“Tell me to stop,” he said, voice hoarse.

She didn’t.

He kissed her.

Not like the night at the gym. Not like the quiet brushes of lips they’d stolen.

This was fuller. Hungrier. Still restrained, but barely.

Eva melted into him, hands sliding up his chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. She felt his breath catch as she pulled him closer.

His hands stayed respectful—one cradling her jaw, the other resting lightly on her waist.

But his mouth said everything else.

Their kiss deepened. Tongues brushed, teeth grazed. She moaned softly into him, felt the sound vibrate between their bodies.

When they finally pulled apart, they were both breathing hard.

“I’m not going to sleep on that couch,” he said, voice tight.

She nodded. “I wasn’t going to let you.”

They stood in the candlelight, their bodies close, but not yet fused.

“We don’t have to do anything,” he added.

“I know.”

“But I want to touch you.”

“You are.”

He smiled faintly. “I want to really touch you.”

Eva reached up and undid the first button of his shirt. Then the second.

“I know,” she said again.

But when he leaned in again, she paused him with a hand on his chest.

“Not here,” she said, echoing the words from the gym.

Caleb looked at her, patient but barely.

She gestured toward the back of the house.

“My room’s warmer.”

He didn’t speak.

He just followed.

---

The bedroom was dim, candlelight casting a golden glow over the quilt, the old wooden floor, the curve of her shoulder as she let the cardigan slip from her frame.

She turned to face him in just a tank top and panties.

He stripped his shirt off without flourish, revealing a torso carved by years of coaching drills and second chances.

They met in the middle of the room like gravity was tired of waiting.

He kissed her again.

And this time, when his hands slid up her sides and found the underside of her breasts, she didn’t stop him.

She arched into him.

His mouth found her throat, then her collarbone, trailing heat.

She gasped when he grazed a nipple through the thin fabric, her hands tangled in his hair.

Still clothed. Still not rushing.

But everything in her body was already a tide pulled toward his shore.

He leaned his forehead against hers.

“We can stop,” he whispered.

She shook her head. “We already didn’t.”

They didn’t make love that night.

But they didn’t not either.

What they shared beneath the quilt was not sex, but something just as naked—touches that lingered, breath shared against bare skin, the kind of closeness you don’t rush for fear of losing it.

They fell asleep entwined.

And for the first time in years, Eva dreamed of staying.

---

Chapter 6: Rain and Restraint

The rain had stopped, but the world still seemed soaked in it—every branch dripping, every rooftop glistening, the earth itself holding the memory of the night. Willow Bay smelled like aftermath: wet cedar, churned soil, the sea’s sharp breath.

Eva woke to silence.

It wasn’t the kind of silence she usually found comforting—the hush of solitude she had grown so good at wrapping around herself like armor. This was heavier. It pressed against her chest. A silence that felt shared.

She turned in bed.

Caleb was still there, asleep beside her, one arm thrown across her waist, his mouth slightly parted. His chest rose and fell in deep, even breaths. The faint light from the window caught the line of his jaw, the stubble darkening his throat, the curve of muscle in his bare shoulder.

He looked peaceful. Vulnerable, even.

Her heart tugged.

It had been years since she had woken up next to someone like this—unrushed, unguarded. There had been hotel rooms, flings in foreign cities, warm bodies beside her after long shoots and longer drinks. But they always disappeared by morning, or she did.

This felt different. Dangerous in its simplicity.

She watched his fingers twitch slightly in sleep, as if reaching for something, and it occurred to her: he had never stopped reaching. Not for her. Not really.

And that realization terrified her.

Because she was still unsure whether she could reach back—and stay.

---

Eva slipped out from under his arm, careful not to wake him, and padded quietly into the kitchen. The chill in the air had crept into the cottage during the night, settling like fog into the walls. She wrapped her grandmother’s old robe tighter around her, its wool soft and worn smooth over the years. Familiar. Safe.

She boiled water on the stove, the faint hiss filling the silence. She ground the beans slowly by hand, listening to the soft crunch, the rhythm of routine. Her hands worked on instinct, each movement practiced, each step precise. She needed the anchor.

The French press sat in the center of the counter like a ritual waiting to be completed.

When the coffee was steeping, she stood at the window and watched the fog roll over the dunes, just beyond the garden. The sky was clearing in streaks of blue, but the ground still wore the storm like a bruise.

She sipped from her mug. The heat cut through the chill in her chest, but didn’t warm the knot forming just beneath her breastbone.

She knew what it was.

It was already too much.

---

He found her on the porch ten minutes later.

The screen door creaked as he stepped out barefoot, jeans slung low on his hips, the hem wet from the hallway floor. His hair was damp from sleep, eyes still soft and unfocused.

She handed him a mug of coffee without looking at him.

He took it wordlessly.

Together, they sat under the heavy wool blanket she’d dragged out from the linen chest. Steam curled from their cups as gulls called overhead and waves whispered just out of sight.

Neither of them spoke.

For a long time, it felt almost normal.

Then Caleb shifted, his hand brushing against her thigh beneath the blanket.

“Did you sleep?” he asked quietly.

Eva hesitated. “Not really.”

He sipped his coffee. “You always were a bad sleeper.”

“I always had too many thoughts.”

“Anything worth sharing?”

She turned toward him slightly. “Last night scared me.”

Caleb didn’t look surprised. Just tired. “Because of how good it felt?”

She nodded. “And how easy it was. You… me. Like no time passed.”

“I didn’t feel scared.”

“No,” she said, “you felt safe. That’s the scary part.”

He was quiet for a moment.

Then: “So what now?”

“I don’t know.”

She stood, pulling the blanket off her legs, stepping barefoot onto the cold porch planks. Her arms crossed tightly, more defensive than chilled.

“I came back here to get quiet. To put space between me and everything. I wasn’t planning to… fall into anything.”

His jaw flexed.

“And you think this is falling?”

“I think I’ve been free-floating for so long, I don’t remember what standing still feels like.”

Caleb rose too. He didn’t move toward her. Just stood there, shirtless, holding his coffee, eyes pinned to the horizon.

“I’ve been standing still for ten years,” he said. “This town. This job. This field. Same coffee every morning. Same porch swing. Same goddamn haircut.”

There was no bitterness in his voice. Just resignation.

“And then you showed up again,” he continued. “And suddenly everything was moving. I was moving.”

She looked at him sharply.

“You say that like it’s my fault.”

He turned toward her. “It’s not your fault. But it is your effect.”

They stared at each other, wind threading through the silence between them.

She spoke first. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t run again.”

She didn’t answer.

Not because she didn’t want to.

Because she didn’t know if she could promise that.

---

Caleb left just after nine.

He didn’t slam the door or say anything bitter. He just grabbed his boots, thanked her for the coffee, and left with a quiet nod, like he was heading to a funeral.

Eva stood in the hallway long after he was gone, staring at the space he had occupied.

It felt emptier than it should.

---

She tried to work.

Sat at her laptop, sorting through the backlog of photos from the last month—stormy dunes, fog-thick forests, candid shots from the festival—but everything looked flat. Impersonal. Even the lighting was off, too blue or too warm, like her lens had been distracted.

She opened the photo of Caleb laughing with the boys in the gym.

Zoomed in on his face.

That was the only one that felt real.

Her fingers hovered over the delete key.

She didn’t press it.

---

The bakery on Main smelled like vanilla and cinnamon and something her childhood used to wear on rainy afternoons. Eva ordered two scones and a loaf of rosemary sourdough, then sat by the window nursing a too-sweet coffee.

Her phone buzzed on the table.

She stared at the screen.

Gallery Director, SF:
Just confirming we still have you down for December 10th. “Still Water” is a strong series. Congrats again on the grant.

Eva stared at the message.

The show.

The opening. The press. The follow-up projects.

She should’ve felt something.

Excitement. Accomplishment.

Instead, she felt… guilt.

And maybe—resentment.

Because even the idea of success now felt like distance.

Like leaving again.

---

She didn’t mean to walk toward the high school. But her feet followed the streets automatically, boots clicking against damp pavement, the wind picking up as she neared the back lot.

The field lights were on.

She heard the thud of bat against ball long before she saw him.

Caleb stood alone in the batting cage, sweat darkening the back of his T-shirt, each swing sharp and precise, like he was trying to drive something out of himself.

She leaned against the fence, watching.

She didn’t call out.

Not yet.

She watched the way he moved—shoulders coiling, legs pivoting, the crack of the bat cutting clean through the air. The way his breath huffed after each swing. Focused. Controlled.

Until it wasn’t.

The next swing cracked too hard.

He grunted, staggered slightly, then dropped the bat.

It hit the turf with a dull clatter.

He turned.

And saw her.

She didn’t move.

Neither did he.

Then he reached down and picked up the bat, resting it across his shoulders.

“I figured you’d be gone by now.”

“I figured you wouldn’t want to see me.”

He offered a tired half-smile. “You’re probably right.”

She walked to the edge of the fence. Stopped.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Caleb.”

He nodded. “I know.”

She watched him set the bat back in the bucket.

“I got a message from my gallery,” she said.

“San Francisco?”

“Yeah.”

“Big show?”

She nodded. “It’s a good opportunity.”

He met her eyes across the distance.

“And you’re thinking about not taking it.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I shouldn’t be,” she admitted.

“But you are.”

She gripped the chain-link fence, cold steel grounding her. “I don’t know how to be in one place anymore.”

“And I don’t know how to follow someone who’s always leaving.”

They stood there in that widening space—her on one side, him on the other.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

He took a breath.

And stepped closer to the fence.

“Maybe,” he said, “we’re doing something hard. Maybe that’s all it is. Two people trying to meet in the middle after a decade of running in opposite directions.”

“And if the middle isn’t enough?”

He reached out. Pressed his palm against the metal.

“Then we stand here. On either side. Until one of us figures out how to cross.”

She placed her hand opposite his.

Cold steel between them.

Warmth on both sides.

And for now… that was enough.

---

Chapter 7: Storm Warning

The ocean warned first.

Long before the forecast crackled across the radio or the town posted alerts on bulletin boards and Facebook groups, the tide began to swell. Not in dramatic waves, not yet, but in the slow, deliberate drag of water against the shoreline—heavier, darker, restless.

Eva stood on the back porch of the cottage, barefoot on the damp boards, and watched the wind push across the dunes like a predator hunting in the grass.

The sky had darkened unnaturally fast. Clouds moved in low, thickening with an oily sheen that told her the weather was shifting into something more serious. Birds flew in erratic patterns overhead. Not migrating—fleeing.

She knew this rhythm.

Oregon storms didn’t arrive with fury. They prowled first. They let you feel the silence before the noise.

She had once photographed typhoons in Vietnam, monsoon season in Kerala, even stood beneath lightning arcs in the open dust plains of Argentina. But somehow, this storm—the one creeping in over Willow Bay—felt more personal.

As if it were bringing something with it she wasn’t ready to name.

---

By early afternoon, emergency bulletins came through in steady intervals: Coastal storm surge alert. Inland flooding possible. High winds expected. Shelter if necessary. Stay off roads after dark.

The town prepared quickly. People moved with practiced choreography—shuttered windows, weighed down porch furniture, cleared drains. Willow Bay had its own kind of storm language, a local fluency in hunkering down.

Eva did what she’d always done: prepared without ceremony.

She filled the tub with water. Charged all her backup batteries. Dug out the candles, set them on every flat surface. Her go-bag was packed with all the essentials: weatherproof coat, extra socks, memory cards, the wide-angle lens she couldn’t bear to lose.

When she finished, she stood in the kitchen, staring at the neatly zipped pack beside the door.

It looked ready to leave.

She hated how familiar that was.

---

She tried to distract herself.

For an hour, she edited photos. For thirty minutes, she tried writing a caption for her blog’s next post: Returning home isn’t always easy. Sometimes the place has changed. Sometimes it’s you.

She didn’t publish it.

She poured a glass of wine, took two sips, and let it sit untouched on the kitchen counter while the wind screamed outside like something wounded.

At dusk, the power flickered.

Then, with a soft click, it went out.

The cottage fell into silence so complete it felt like a held breath.

Eva lit the candles slowly, deliberately. The soft orange light moved across the walls in flickering patterns, making the old house feel like a place haunted by breath and memory. Shadows bent across the photographs on the mantel. The fireplace looked like it remembered fire but had no desire to reignite.

And in her chest, something ached like a hollow place she’d forgotten to fill.

She hadn’t heard from Caleb.

She didn’t expect to.

That was the worst part—how good she was at expecting nothing.

---

The knock came just as the last light left the sky.

Three hard raps.

The kind you feel more than hear.

Eva froze.

Then moved.

She opened the door into wind and rain—and Caleb.

Soaked. Hair dripping. Jacket half-unzipped, jeans plastered to his thighs, chest heaving slightly as if the storm had tried to stop him and failed. His eyes swept over her quickly, from her bare feet to her robe to her face. He looked like a man who’d been running—not just from weather.

“You’re not answering your phone,” he said.

“I turned it off.”

“I figured.”

She stepped aside.

“Come in.”

---

He peeled off his coat slowly in the entryway. Water pooled on the floor beneath him, and Eva brought him a towel without speaking. He took it, rubbing at his arms, his hair. His shirt clung to him, translucent with wet.

“Sit,” she said.

He did.

The candlelight made him look carved, shadowed in all the places her hands had once touched. He rested his elbows on his knees, towel draped over his shoulders, gaze low.

“I’m not here to push,” he said finally. “Or talk if you don’t want to.”

“You came through a storm.”

“You’re alone out here.”

“I’m not helpless.”

He looked up at her then, a flicker of fire in his voice. “I never said you were.”

She softened. Just slightly. Sat across from him.

“Then why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe I just needed to see for myself that you were still standing.”

“I am.”

“Are you?”

He said it gently.

But the question cut.

She looked away. Picked at the hem of her sleeve.

“I’m trying to be.”

The wind groaned against the house like a warning. The walls shuddered softly.

He stood and moved to the window.

“They’re saying the lower docks are already flooding,” he said. “I helped sandbag the rec center. Couple guys are sleeping there tonight in case we need to open it as shelter.”

She nodded. “You’re staying?”

“I will if they call for evac. But I wanted to check here first.”

She crossed her arms. “Because you think I need rescuing.”

“No,” he said. “Because I think you won’t ask for help. And I know what it looks like when someone doesn’t want to be alone but won’t admit it.”

The wind pushed again, this time loud enough to rattle the windows.

“Storm’s coming in faster than they thought,” he said.

“I know.”

Caleb turned toward her.

And the space between them seemed to breathe.

“I should go,” he said. “Before the roads get worse.”

“You could wait it out,” she offered, before thinking too hard.

He studied her.

“Would that be a mistake?” he asked.

She swallowed.

“Probably.”

“Do you want me to make it?”

Her breath hitched.

But she didn’t answer.

---

He stayed.

Not right away. He walked to the door, stood there for a long minute, jacket in hand. And then he let it fall.

They didn’t say anything else.

Eva lit more candles. Pulled out a second blanket. Turned on the gas burner and heated soup without ceremony.

They ate in near silence.

Caleb’s hands were steady, but his shoulders tight. Eva couldn’t stop watching him—the way his jaw tensed with each bite, the subtle twitch in his fingers when they brushed hers over the spoon.

The house groaned again. Wind howled.

When a gust slammed into the side of the cottage hard enough to shake it, they both looked up.

Eva stood slowly.

“This place has been here for seventy years,” she said. “It can take more than wind.”

“I’m not worried about the house.”

She nodded.

And for a moment, neither was sure what they were talking about anymore.

---

It was after midnight when she found him standing at the back window, arms crossed, watching the storm through the fogged glass.

She stepped up behind him, the blanket from the couch wrapped around her shoulders.

“I have a feeling we’re not going anywhere tomorrow,” she said softly.

“Probably not.”

He didn’t turn.

“Did you mean it?” she asked.

“What?”

“When you said being with me makes everything start moving again.”

He turned then, slowly.

His eyes met hers.

“I didn’t mean to say it out loud. But I’ve never said anything truer.”

Her chest pulled tight.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“I know.”

“I don’t know what to do with this. You. Us.”

“Then don’t do anything yet,” he said. “Just let it exist. Let me be here.”

She stepped closer.

Close enough to feel the heat of him.

Close enough to lose herself.

And then—

She kissed him.

Not tentative.

Not testing.

But with the hunger of someone who’d starved herself of something honest.

He caught her in it instantly.

His hands slid beneath the blanket, found her waist, pulled her in.

Their mouths moved like they were remembering how they fit, how they used to dance between teeth and breath and need.

She pushed his shirt up and he let her.

When her fingers found his skin, he shivered—not from cold.

He pressed his forehead to hers.

“Eva…”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to run tonight.”

“I won’t.”

---

They made it to the couch. Or maybe the couch found them.

She pulled the blanket between them and the cushions, dragged him down onto it, their bodies winding around each other in pieces. Legs tangled. Hands roamed.

He didn’t ask for more.

She didn’t rush.

It was wanting that mattered.

Not having.

Not yet.

They kissed until their mouths ached. Until the candlelight dimmed and the wind slowed.

They didn’t sleep right away.

And when they finally did, it was together.

Like an answer they weren’t ready to say aloud.

---

Chapter 8: Body Memory

When Eva woke, everything was warm.

She lay nestled under the old quilt, her cheek pressed against Caleb’s chest, his heartbeat a steady drum beneath her ear. His skin was warm and smooth, salted lightly with the scent of clean sweat and sleep. A faint scratch of stubble brushed her temple every time he shifted his head against the pillow.

Outside the cottage, the world was still gray with post-storm haze. But inside—here, in this narrow bed built for one but holding two—it was quiet and soft and full of breath.

She stayed still.

Her fingers rested on his stomach, splayed out across the hard plane of muscle just above the waistband of his sweats. She could feel the slow rise and fall of his body under her palm, the way it expanded and contracted with each breath, each exhale.

She’d spent years sleeping alone. In hotel rooms. On strangers’ couches. In hammocks and tents and the passenger seat of rental cars. But this? This was different.

This wasn’t just company.

This was him.

And somehow, her body hadn’t forgotten a single part of him.

The press of his thigh between hers. The weight of his hand resting against her hip, fingers curled loosely under the hem of her shirt. The slope of his shoulder, now broader than it was at seventeen, but still the safest place she’d ever laid her head.

She should have been terrified.

Instead, she felt… still.

Until he spoke.

“You’re awake.”

His voice was low, still rough from sleep.

She didn’t lift her head. Just nodded against his chest.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t be gone.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t regret staying.”

His chest rose beneath her cheek with a long inhale.

“I don’t.”

She finally looked up at him.

Their eyes met.

No hesitation. No guarded edges.

Just the kind of quiet that comes after a storm when the debris settles and you’re left with what survived.

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to let you.”

“But you did.”

“And I’m glad,” she whispered.

His fingers brushed her hair back from her forehead. “Me too.”

She shifted slightly, drawing her leg higher against his hip, the friction beneath the covers not overt but enough to make them both pause.

She felt the change in his breath immediately.

The subtle tension in his stomach.

The beginning of want.

She could feel it, too. The slow throb of memory uncoiling beneath her skin.

What they hadn’t done last night.

What they’d almost done—hands on skin, mouths wandering, bodies winding tighter and tighter under candlelight and rain—but hadn’t finished.

She remembered the weight of his thigh between hers, the rasp of his breath when she’d whispered don’t go.

And now—

His hand slid down to the small of her back, palm pressing lightly.

“I remember how you used to move when you wanted me,” he said softly.

Her breath caught. “Do I still move the same way?”

“Worse,” he said, voice thickening. “Better. I don’t know. It’s different.”

“I don’t feel different.”

He looked at her then—truly looked—and something deep in his expression turned serious.

“You’re softer now,” he murmured. “But sharper where it counts. You feel like someone who knows what she wants but still doesn’t trust she deserves it.”

She blinked.

That landed somewhere low and hard.

And then his mouth was on hers.

Slow. Patient. Not the desperation of last night, but the gravity of morning-after. The kiss of someone choosing her again in daylight.

She kissed him back, fingers curling into his hair, the silky strands sliding between her knuckles. His tongue brushed hers, coaxing rather than claiming. His hand slid beneath her shirt—his shirt, still warm from their shared body heat—and settled on the curve of her spine.

He shifted them gently, rolling her onto her back.

She went willingly.

His mouth never left hers.

When his palm found the swell of her breast under the thin cotton, she arched into him instinctively, a breath catching in her throat. His thumb circled the nipple slowly, deliberately, the friction lighting sparks behind her eyes.

She gasped into his mouth.

He kissed her harder in response.

And then she broke the kiss—just long enough to murmur, “I want you.”

Caleb met her gaze, his own wide and dark with heat. “You sure?”

She pulled the shirt off in one slow, smooth motion. Let it fall to the floor. Laid bare before him.

“I’ve never been more sure.”

His eyes swept down her body with reverence.

“Christ, Eva.”

He kissed down her neck, down the line of her collarbone, pausing to suck gently at the dip beneath it. His hand slid over her ribs, across her stomach, and down to the edge of her panties.

He paused.

Waited.

She nodded.

And he slid them down slowly, reverently, exposing her inch by inch until there was nothing left between them but breath and memory.

She pulled his sweats down in return, hands grazing the sharp line of his hips, fingers tracing the soft trail of hair leading lower. When he kicked the fabric off, she opened her thighs for him without fear.

They met in the middle, bodies fitting like puzzle pieces rediscovered in an attic box.

When he slid into her, slow and deep, she gasped and gripped his back.

His eyes closed.

And for a moment, there was no past. No future.

Only now.

Only this.

He moved like he knew her. Like he remembered every nerve, every place that made her shudder, every pressure point she’d forgotten how to name.

And she gave herself to it.

Completely.

She kissed his shoulder. Bit down when the heat coiled low in her belly.

He whispered her name when he began to lose control.

And when she came, it was with his hand in hers, their fingers locked, their breath caught between moans and words that didn’t make it out of their mouths.

He followed soon after, burying his face in her neck, shaking against her.

They stayed like that for a long time.

Sweat-slicked. Silent. Wrecked in the best way.

---

Later, they moved to the shower.

Water hot.

Hands gentle.

They soaped each other slowly—Caleb’s fingers in her hair, her palms sliding across his back, down his chest. Every touch was half tender, half rediscovery. She turned to rinse, and he kissed her shoulder blade. She leaned into him, wet and bare and unashamed.

They didn’t speak.

They didn’t need to.

---

They made breakfast in the kitchen, barefoot and towel-clad, candles still burning because the power hadn’t come back yet.

He made eggs and bacon.

She made coffee and toast.

When the toast burned slightly, she laughed for the first time that day. And Caleb grinned like he’d just won something.

They sat at the table, shoulders touching.

He buttered her toast without asking.

She slid the mug of coffee toward him before he could get up.

“You always drank it black,” she said.

“Still do.”

“You still like your eggs runny?”

He looked at her.

Soft. Careful.

“I still like waking up to you.”

Her throat went tight.

She reached for his hand.

They didn’t let go.

---

By noon, the storm had fully passed.

The town was quiet. Roads still slick. Power still out. But everything felt… calm.

Eva stood on the porch wrapped in one of his shirts, coffee in hand, watching the clouds clear over the bay. Seagulls wheeled above the docks again. Boats bobbed on the tide.

The light hit the beach in long, golden streaks.

Caleb came up behind her.

Wrapped his arms around her waist.

Rested his chin on her shoulder.

“You thinking again?”

“Always.”

“Say it.”

She sipped. Swallowed. “What if this doesn’t work?”

“Then we’ll break each other slowly.”

“Not funny.”

“I’m not joking,” he said. “I just think if we’re going to crash again, I’d rather it be because we tried something real than because we were too afraid to.”

She turned in his arms.

Met his gaze.

“You want real?”

“I want you.”

That silenced her.

Not because she didn’t believe him.

But because part of her was starting to believe it could be true.

And that, more than anything, was what scared her most.

---

Chapter 9: Fragile Burn

By the time the sun broke through the clouds, it was nearly noon.

Willow Bay shimmered under the soft gold light, everything still slick and dripping from the storm. The town had that just-washed look—rooftops glistening, grass flattened, tree branches sagging under the weight of rain. There were puddles in the streets and sand scattered across sidewalks, and the sky was a dome of quiet, luminous blue.

Eva stood barefoot in the open doorway of the cottage, mug in hand, watching the light shift across the porch. The air smelled like pine needles, sea spray, and damp cedar. Somewhere down the street, a generator kicked to life, its low hum breaking the hush.

Behind her, Caleb rustled through the kitchen cabinets in search of more coffee. He was still shirtless, a towel slung around his hips. Every few moments, she caught herself glancing back at him—just to be sure he was still real.

He caught her the third time.

“What?” he asked, voice low, a little smug.

She smiled over her shoulder. “Nothing. Just checking.”

“That I didn’t disappear?”

“That I didn’t dream you.”

He walked toward her slowly, barefoot on old wood, until he was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his body.

“I could say the same,” he murmured.

She leaned her head against his chest, breathing in the familiar, dizzying scent of skin and sleep. His arms came around her, slow and certain.

They stood like that for a long while, just swaying slightly to the rhythm of nothing in particular.

“Breakfast?” he said eventually.

“I can make something.”

“I don’t trust you not to burn the toast again.”

“I don’t trust you to let me live that down.”

He kissed her hair. “Fair.”

---

They ate curled up on the couch—scrambled eggs, sourdough toast, the last of the marmalade she’d found in a half-empty jar at the back of the fridge. Caleb sat behind her with his legs bracketing hers, his plate balanced on one thigh, hers on the coffee table. She leaned back against his chest, her fork tapping gently against the plate as she scooped up eggs and passed him pieces of toast.

There was something domestic in it. Dangerously so.

Not in a forced way.

In the way that made her stomach ache a little, because it was too easy.

She wanted to ask what it meant.

He didn’t.

Neither of them did.

Instead, they cleaned up in silence, brushing shoulders in the sink, bumping hips when she reached for the dish towel. She laughed when he flicked water at her. He kissed her neck in apology.

By the time they’d finished, the cottage looked like it had always been shared.

---

They went for a walk just before three.

The roads were still wet, the gravel underfoot slick in spots, but the sky had stayed clear. Caleb had left behind a flannel shirt that she wore unbuttoned over a tank top and shorts, her camera slung over one shoulder. He wore jeans and boots, a hoodie pulled up to his elbows.

They didn’t hold hands.

But they walked close—close enough to brush.

Willow Bay looked like it was coming back to life. A few shops were open again. The bakery had a handwritten sign taped to the door that read NO POWER BUT HOT COFFEE, COME IN ANYWAY. Children splashed in puddles. Neighbors checked fences and downed branches. There was a subtle rhythm to it—post-storm recovery, small-town grace.

It made Eva ache a little.

This place was quieter than the life she’d built.

But it was also more present.

“People seem… calm,” she said as they passed a woman sweeping wet leaves from her porch.

Caleb nodded. “We’ve had worse. Everyone knows how to wait it out.”

“And then just… go back to normal?”

“More or less.”

“I don’t think I’ve done anything ‘normal’ in ten years.”

He gave her a sideways glance. “No kidding.”

She elbowed him gently. “Rude.”

“You like me rude.”

She rolled her eyes but smiled anyway.

---

They reached the high school around four.

The baseball field had taken a beating. Patches of mud stretched across the outfield, and the dugout had flooded. The chalk lines were washed away. But the diamond still stood.

Caleb hopped the low fence easily and walked out onto the field, hands in his pockets, head tilted toward the sky. Eva watched him from behind the lens—zooming in on the lines of his body, the way the wind tugged his hoodie, the shift in his posture as he scanned the damage.

She snapped three photos in quick succession.

Then one more.

He turned.

Caught her.

“You still do that,” he said as she lowered the camera.

“What?”

“Photograph me when you think I’m not looking.”

“I like you best when you’re not posing.”

“I like you best when you’re not running.”

She froze.

His expression didn’t change.

But the words lingered between them like a wire pulled tight.

She slung the camera back over her shoulder. “I’m not running now.”

“I know.”

“But you think I will.”

“I think,” he said slowly, “that you haven’t decided yet whether you want to stay.”

“I haven’t.”

There was no apology in her voice.

Just truth.

He nodded once.

And didn’t press.

---

That night, the power came back.

They celebrated with candles anyway.

Caleb grilled sandwiches while Eva lit the fireplace and pulled down an old quilt from the top shelf. They lay together on the rug in front of the hearth, the fire painting their bare legs gold and amber.

They didn’t undress each other.

They didn’t need to.

She wore one of his T-shirts. He wore sweats and nothing else. Their bodies didn’t clamor. They just curled.

At one point, she rested her head on his thigh, and he traced idle patterns along her shoulder.

“You still take photos like you’re trying to prove something,” he said quietly.

She looked up. “I am.”

“To who?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Myself. The world. Everyone who said I was just good at running away.”

He was quiet.

Then: “You are good at it.”

She closed her eyes. “Yeah.”

“But I think you’re getting tired.”

“I am.”

His hand stilled on her skin.

“Then maybe,” he said, “you should stop.”

Her eyes opened.

His gaze was calm. Steady. He wasn’t asking her to stay.

Not yet.

He was asking her to consider it.

Which, somehow, was worse.

Because she already was.

---

They made love again that night.

But this time, it wasn’t slow and reverent.

It was hungry.

She straddled him on the rug in front of the fire, knees on either side of his hips, her fingers curled into his shoulders. His hands slid up her thighs, beneath the hem of his borrowed T-shirt. When he lifted it, baring her breasts to the firelight, he looked at her like he might never stop.

“Still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“Don’t say that unless you mean it.”

“I never stopped meaning it.”

She kissed him hard then.

Bit his lip. Pulled his hair.

When he slid into her, she gasped and clutched his jaw, foreheads pressed, hips rocking slow and deep.

They didn’t speak again until it was over.

Until she lay breathless across his chest, the fire dying low beside them.

Until he whispered, “You scare the shit out of me.”

She smiled.

Whispered back, “Good.”

---

Chapter 10: The Weight of Want

Eva didn’t dream, or if she did, the dreams dissolved the moment she opened her eyes.

The quilt was tangled around her calves. Caleb’s body was pressed into her back, one arm draped across her waist, the other under the pillow they shared. His breath was warm at the nape of her neck, slow and even. The fire in the hearth had long since died to faint orange coals, and the cottage was cold except for where they touched.

She didn’t move.

Her body ached — not unpleasantly. Every part of her was marked by him. Not in a visible way, but in the quiet throb between her thighs, the sore, slow-burning stretch in her muscles, the memory of where his mouth had been.

She closed her eyes.

Not because she wanted to sleep again.

But because for the first time in years, she felt no need to be anywhere else.

No flight instinct.

No itch to pack her bags or double-check her escape route.

Just stillness.

And the steady, impossible beat of contentment.

---

Caleb stirred behind her a few minutes later.

She felt it first — the subtle hitch in his breath, the shift in his chest as he inhaled deeper, the slow flex of his fingers against her stomach. Then his voice, low and quiet.

“You awake?”

“Yes.”

He tightened his arm around her. “I had a dream about you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You were barefoot. On the docks. Laughing. The wind was in your hair. You kept calling my name but you were always just out of reach.”

Her throat went tight. “Did you catch me?”

“No,” he murmured, kissing her shoulder. “You let me.”

She turned to face him.

The look in his eyes stole her breath.

He wasn’t just seeing her.

He was recognizing her.

The girl he loved.

The woman she’d become.

The past and the present colliding without friction.

They didn’t kiss. Not right away.

Just lay there, forehead to forehead, as if the answer to everything might be found in the silence between their breaths.

---

They finally got up when the sunlight filled the cottage in long, slanted beams, casting gold across the floorboards and brightening the haze of dust in the air.

Caleb started the shower while Eva made coffee. They took turns dressing in the warm aftermath of steam, brushing shoulders in the small hallway without urgency.

She wore a loose sweater and jeans. No makeup. No effort to disguise the softness in her face. He wore a long-sleeved Henley and worn boots, his hair still damp.

She took her camera.

He took his truck keys.

They left the house together.

The town would see them.

And neither of them said a word about hiding it.

---

Willow Bay was alive again.

The storm had passed, and with it, the hush that followed. Now, the town was buzzing — not loud, but steady. Boats moved again on the dock. The bakery had reopened, smells of cardamom and honey curling into the air. Kids biked down the street, cutting sharp turns around puddles. Two storefronts had sandbags still piled outside, but no one seemed panicked.

Life had returned.

And with it, the weight of being known.

Eva felt it the moment they stepped into the coffee shop.

Conversations slowed. Heads turned. A few people smiled, subtle and knowing. One woman — someone older, with cropped silver hair and a sharp chin — offered a greeting that sounded like finally.

Caleb didn’t hesitate. He held the door for her, let her order first, and then joined her at the two-top in the corner, just under the window.

She kept her eyes on the sugar packets.

“They’re watching,” she murmured.

“They’ll stop.”

“Will they?”

He stirred his coffee. “Eventually.”

She let the silence stretch between them for a while. The hum of the espresso machine. The chime of the door as more locals wandered in. A child laughing somewhere near the counter.

“I don’t know how to be in something,” she said finally.

He looked at her.

His expression was calm. Not condescending. Just open.

“You already are.”

“I don’t know what to do when people see it.”

Caleb leaned across the table, one hand resting on hers.

“Then let them look.”

---

After coffee, they walked down to the docks.

The sea was calm today, tide pulled back, the scent of salt strong on the air. The fishing boats bobbed quietly, ropes creaking against cleats. Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying out in low, broken notes.

Caleb pointed out where the flooding had reached. Eva snapped a few photos—boats resting awkwardly against the lower slips, bits of driftwood still caught in the fencing near the shore.

But the photos weren’t the point.

Not really.

She just needed the camera between her and the ache building in her chest.

He took her hand as they crossed the wooden planks.

Didn’t ask.

Just held it.

She didn’t pull away.

---

That afternoon, they drove up the coast.

Caleb knew a trail—a narrow path winding down through the cliffside, overgrown but still marked. It led to a half-hidden cove he’d discovered as a teenager and never shared with anyone. Not even his ex-wife.

Eva walked behind him, camera swinging at her hip, feet moving carefully between roots and slick stones. When they reached the end of the trail, the trees gave way to a sudden, astonishing view:

Sea grass bent in the breeze, waves breaking gently on smooth gray rock, and a stretch of shore untouched by footprints.

It felt like a secret.

They sat on a wide driftwood log near the tide line.

Caleb skipped stones.

Eva watched the light shift across the water.

“I used to think I was hard to love,” she said softly.

He stopped.

Stone in hand.

Turned toward her.

“Why?”

She hesitated. “Because I wanted everything. And I never knew how to stay.”

Caleb nodded. “I think I used to love people by trying to fix them. Like if I just showed up hard enough, they’d stop leaving.”

“Did it work?”

“No.” He tossed the stone. It skittered once. Sank. “Not even once.”

She leaned into his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” His hand found hers. “I’m not waiting for you to leave. But I’m not afraid to miss you if you do.”

That undid her more than any plea would have.

Because he wasn’t asking for anything.

Just offering her everything.

---

They made dinner back at the cottage with the windows open and the fire lit low.

It rained briefly—just a soft drizzle—but the air stayed warm. She cooked. He chopped. Their bodies moved around each other like they’d done this for years.

And maybe they had, in another life.

She wore his shirt again.

He didn’t comment.

He just watched her.

Like she was becoming something solid in his memory.

---

They didn’t have sex that night.

Instead, they lay on the couch, limbs tangled, the rain pattering softly on the roof above them. Caleb’s hand rested against the bare skin of her waist, his thumb tracing small circles just under the fabric of her shirt.

Eva tucked her head under his chin, nose pressed to the curve of his neck.

“This feels dangerous,” she whispered.

“What does?”

“Letting it be good.”

He didn’t speak.

Just kissed her temple.

And whispered, “Then let it.”

---

Chapter 11: Fault Lines

There was no earthquake. No thunderclap.

But something shifted.

Eva felt it before she could name it.

The morning was soft — gold sun spilling across the quilt, the scent of coffee rising from the kitchen. Caleb was already up, shirtless, barefoot, moving with slow efficiency as he made breakfast. He had a towel thrown over his shoulder and a bandage on his thumb from chopping wood the night before. He winced when he sliced an orange.

She watched him from the hallway, leaning against the doorframe, wearing nothing but one of his shirts and her own hesitation.

He looked up.

Smiled.

“There you are,” he said, voice warm with sleep and something steadier. “I was about to come wake you.”

“You should’ve,” she said.

“I like letting you come to me.”

Her stomach flipped. She crossed the room and kissed him before she could overthink it. Just a press of her mouth to his shoulder. His skin was warm and familiar, the stubble on his jaw rough against her cheek.

He kissed her hair.

They didn’t say anything else.

But the moment stayed with her.

Too gentle. Too easy.

Like the eye of something she wasn’t ready to see coming.

---

Breakfast was quiet.

He made eggs. She sliced bread.

They passed things back and forth between them — butter, coffee, the newspaper someone had thrown up the steps of the porch earlier that morning. She didn’t even realize she’d slipped into routine until she caught herself reaching for the jelly without looking. Caught herself knowing where the knives were without asking.

Caleb said something about heading to the high school later — a meeting with the athletics director about summer renovations. She nodded. Tried to sound casual. Said she might walk the beach, take some photos if the light held.

And it was all so easy.

That was the problem.

Because easy didn’t stay.

Easy wasn’t real.

And she had never trusted anything that didn’t cost her.

---

The call came just after noon.

She’d gone back to the darkroom.

The one she’d converted in the back of the cottage — a half-finished space still smelling of old paper and mildew, a red light hanging from a hook on the ceiling like a quiet warning. She was developing one of the images she’d taken of Caleb on the field — sunlight slicing across his profile as he stared down the diamond, a quiet tension in his shoulders.

She’d just pulled it from the solution, water dripping from the edges, when her phone buzzed on the windowsill.

Unknown number.

She ignored it.

Buzzed again.

Voicemail.

Then another buzz.

A text this time.

SF Gallery:
“Eva, just a reminder that your final photo selections for the December installation are due next week. Also, the museum press team would like to confirm your availability for the Sunday keynote. Call us when you’re back online.”

The blood drained from her face.

She had forgotten.

Not the show itself. Not entirely. But the timeline. The commitments. The expectation that she would still be who she’d been when she signed that contract.

World-traveling Eva Hartley.

The woman with galleries in three cities. A National Geographic cover. A sponsored contract with Leica.

She’d agreed to the keynote months ago.

Had even joked, in an email to her agent, that it would be easy — just another stage, another crowd full of strangers who believed she was brave because she could stand still long enough to take a photo of someone else’s pain.

Now, even the idea of stepping on that stage made her chest feel tight.

She stared at the message.

Her fingers hovered over the screen.

She didn’t call back.

---

Caleb found her on the porch that evening, barefoot, still in the same clothes from that morning. Her camera sat beside her, untouched. The coffee in her mug had long gone cold.

He crouched beside her and studied her face.

“You okay?”

She nodded.

He waited.

She didn’t elaborate.

He sat next to her and pulled her legs across his lap.

“Did I do something?”

She blinked. “What? No. God, no.”

“You’ve been in your head all day.”

She hesitated.

Then handed him the phone.

He read the text.

Exhaled slowly.

“San Francisco,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“The keynote.”

“Yeah.”

“And the show.”

She nodded.

“How long?”

“I’d have to leave next week.”

He looked down at her feet in his lap. Ran his hand gently over her shin.

“That’s soon.”

“It’s already been too long. They’ve been waiting.”

“Are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

Caleb didn’t press.

He just kept his hand on her leg, thumb brushing lightly back and forth. Grounding. Steady.

“It’s okay to want both,” he said after a while.

She looked at him.

“Both?”

“This,” he said. “And that.”

She shook her head. “Is it?”

“Not easy,” he said. “But possible.”

“I’ve never been good at that.”

“Then maybe that’s what this is,” he said. “Practice.”

Her chest ached.

Because he meant it.

Because he wasn’t demanding anything.

And that made her want to give him everything.

---

They didn’t touch that night.

Not like before.

Not in fire.

But in something slower.

Caleb lay beside her in bed, one hand resting between them, open but not reaching. Eva turned toward him, tucked her hand into his.

“I don’t want to leave,” she whispered.

“But you might.”

“I don’t want that to mean I’m leaving you.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“But it will feel like that.”

His fingers curled around hers.

“Then come back.”

She closed her eyes.

“I might not know how.”

“Then I’ll wait until you do.”

---

The next morning, she packed a small bag.

Just a camera. A laptop. A change of clothes.

She told Caleb she needed to clear her head, and he didn’t ask where she was going. He just walked her to the door, kissed her slowly, and whispered: “Be honest with yourself.”

She drove.

Not to San Francisco.

Not yet.

Just north — along the coast, through the trees, following the roads she used to know as a teenager, before the world got big and she got small inside it.

She stopped at a viewpoint high above the cliffs and took three photos of the same stretch of sea.

Then one of herself in the mirror of the car.

She didn’t look like a woman lost.

But she didn’t look like one found, either.

Just someone balancing on the edge of something too wide to name.

---

Chapter 12: Return Flight

Eva hadn’t cried when she left.

She had told herself she wouldn’t. That it wasn’t goodbye, not really. That she was just leaving the cottage for a few days, heading back into the noise to check a few boxes, fulfill a few obligations.

But the second she turned onto the highway, the trees rising on either side like sentinels, her throat tightened.

She drove in silence.

No music. No podcasts. No distractions.

Just the sound of tires on wet asphalt and the steady, pulsing beat of her own regret.

---

The city rose in pieces.

First the flat land, dotted with strip malls and chain diners. Then the suburbs, with their mirror-windowed office buildings and perfectly placed trees. And finally, San Francisco itself — all steep inclines, swarming traffic, and the glitter of the bay breaking against the skyline.

By the time she reached her hotel, she felt like she’d crossed an invisible threshold — out of the life she’d been building back in Willow Bay, and back into the version of herself she’d polished for the world.

The girl who smiled at press previews.

The woman with sleek black boots and a camera slung artfully over one shoulder.

The one who didn’t hesitate.

She stood in the elevator with her suitcase in hand, watching herself in the mirrored walls.

Hair tied back.

Sunglasses tucked into the neckline of her coat.

Expression flat.

Controlled.

She didn’t look like someone who had just spent a week wrapped in a man’s arms, whispering maybe against his chest.

She looked like someone who had already chosen to leave.

And maybe that was what terrified her most.

---

Her hotel suite was exactly what it was supposed to be: curated and impersonal.

Cream walls, silver accents, a floor-to-ceiling window framing the bridge like it was something real and not just another picture.

Eva set her bags down in the entryway and walked barefoot across the polished floor.

The bed had been turned down.

A bottle of wine chilled in a bucket by the minibar.

Everything was quiet, expensive, antiseptic.

She stood in the center of it and felt… small.

---

The gallery was a twenty-minute drive.

She arrived just before the press walk-through, Monica waiting for her at the door, clipboard in one hand, coffee in the other.

“Eva. You’re here. Finally.”

“I said I’d be,” Eva replied, forcing a smile.

“You did. You just disappeared for a week and gave me three ulcers in the process. But whatever—it’s fine. It’s fine. Everything’s under control. Mostly.”

Monica rattled off a list of updates: adjusted lighting, new wall text, a sponsor who wanted to meet her during the panel, a photographer from Art & Image magazine doing portraits backstage before the keynote.

Eva nodded through all of it.

She didn’t absorb most of it.

Instead, her attention snagged on a detail on the back wall of the gallery: a lone photo, printed large, mounted clean and stark against raw white.

It was Caleb.

The portrait. The one she’d shot on the third day back in Willow Bay. Mid-afternoon, in golden light, just as he’d turned toward her. Not posing. Not smiling.

Just… there.

He looked at the viewer the way he’d looked at her that day: like he knew her better than she knew herself.

Like he wasn’t asking anything.

But was willing to stay anyway.

A sudden wave of heat rushed to her face.

“Do you want to remove that one?” Monica asked, sensing her hesitation.

“No,” Eva said.

Monica blinked. “You sure? It’s a little… personal. I mean, the others are powerful, distant, textured. This one’s practically breathing.”

“I’m sure,” Eva said firmly.

She turned away before Monica could see the tears threatening the edge of her composure.

---

The walk-through felt mechanical.

Critics with notepads.

Curators with tailored blazers and wide, appreciative eyes.

They said things like:

• “You’ve always had a talent for isolation in scale.”
• “There’s more vulnerability here than in your last series. Is that intentional?”
• “The way you let light interrupt the human subjects — that’s a bold shift.”

Eva nodded.

Smiled.

Deflected.

She said words about stillness and reflection and post-pandemic internality. She referenced Deakins and Cartier-Bresson and topographical minimalism. She quoted herself from a New York Times interview two years ago because it was easier than coming up with something new.

But inside?

She was screaming.

Because none of these people knew her.

Not really.

They knew her work.

They knew how she shaped loneliness into frames.

But they didn’t know that the man in the final portrait called her “Hartley” when she burned the toast and whispered please don’t leave when he was half asleep.

They didn’t know that the fog in her Willow Bay shots wasn’t atmosphere — it was cover.

---

Later, she stood alone in the bathroom, hands gripping the edge of the sink.

The water ran cold.

She stared at herself in the mirror and didn’t recognize the woman looking back.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

She didn’t want to look.

But she did.

Caleb:
I’m guessing you’re buried in gallery people and free wine.
I don’t want to interrupt.
Just…
I miss you.
Thought maybe that would matter.

She sank to the floor and covered her mouth with one hand.

It mattered.

It mattered so much she couldn’t breathe.

---

That night, she lay in bed in her hotel room and tried to sleep.

She couldn’t.

The bed was too big. The silence too clean. The light outside too bright.

She stared at the ceiling for hours.

Then, just after 3 a.m., she picked up her phone.

She opened the photo album.

Scrolled past international folders. Namibia. Argentina. Japan. Nepal.

Stopped at Willow Bay.

There he was.

Sitting in her kitchen, pouring coffee.

Lying beside her on the couch, eyes closed, hand tangled in her hair.

Standing on the beach in the early light, staring out at nothing.

And then — the last shot.

Taken just before she left.

Him on the porch, watching her go.

No anger.

No blame.

Just a quiet kind of waiting.

Her throat closed.

She opened the message thread.

Typed.

Deleted.

Typed again.

Eva:
I don’t know how to do this.

A pause.

Then more.

I don’t know how to live in two worlds.
But I’m scared this one doesn’t know me anymore.
And I’m scared I broke something by leaving.

She stared at it.

Then, finally, hit send.

The reply came less than a minute later.

Caleb:
You didn’t break anything.
You just left the door open.
Come home.

---

Chapter 13: Come Back Slow

The road back to Willow Bay felt longer than the one that had taken her away.

Not because of traffic or weather. Not even distance.

Because this time, she wasn’t running from something.

She was choosing what to return to.

Every mile that passed carved away another layer of defense. Her knuckles loosened on the steering wheel. Her jaw unclenched. By the time the forest thickened and the sea came back into view — cold and silver-blue under the late afternoon sky — she was trembling.

She turned off the main highway and into the quiet hum of town.

It was the same.

Of course it was. Willow Bay never changed on the outside. That was its trick. It shifted internally — inside the people, the relationships, the pauses between small talk at the bakery counter.

She passed the bookstore. The rec center. The field.

Her heart stuttered when she saw the floodlights off and the bleachers empty.

Part of her hoped he’d be there.

Another part hoped he wouldn’t.

---

She didn’t text.

Didn’t call.

Just parked in front of the cottage, grabbed her bag from the backseat, and stood at the edge of the porch for a long, still moment.

The front door looked just as she left it — slightly weathered, paint chipped on the bottom right corner. She’d meant to repaint it in the spring.

She let herself in slowly.

The house smelled like cedar and lemon and something else—warmth, maybe. The kind of smell that settles only when someone’s been living in a place. The lights were off, but someone had opened the windows; the breeze drifted through like it belonged.

And in the kitchen, by the sink—

Caleb.

His back was to her, sleeves rolled to the elbows, forearms damp. He was washing dishes, of all things, barefoot on the tile floor, humming something under his breath.

Eva didn’t speak.

She didn’t need to.

He turned a moment later — not startled, not surprised.

Just… quiet.

They stared at each other.

Her heart thudded once.

Twice.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Hey.”

He reached for the dish towel, dried his hands slowly, then walked across the room until he was standing right in front of her.

“Are you here for a visit,” he asked, “or are you home?”

Eva blinked.

That was the question, wasn’t it?

She thought she’d know the answer when she saw him. When she stepped back into this house. But nothing felt clear. Everything felt raw.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But I’m not running again. Not today.”

His eyes searched her.

Then he stepped forward and pulled her into his arms.

She sank into him like gravity.

He didn’t kiss her.

Not yet.

He just held her.

Hard.

Like he needed to remind himself she was real.

---

They didn’t talk about San Francisco that night.

Not really.

She sat on the kitchen counter while he reheated soup, her hair damp from a shower, her eyes heavy with travel and emotion. He handed her a bowl without asking if she was hungry. She ate in silence, and he sat across from her, letting the quiet stretch without pressing it.

Eventually, he reached across the table and took her hand.

“Still feel like a ghost?” he asked softly.

“Less,” she admitted. “Still haunted, though.”

“I can live with that.”

She squeezed his fingers.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For not making me beg.”

He stood, crossed to her, and kissed her forehead.

“You never had to.”

---

They lay in bed that night with the window open, the sea humming beyond the dunes. Neither of them reached for more. They just curled into each other — a tangle of limbs and quiet forgiveness.

At one point, Eva pressed her mouth to his chest and whispered, “You scare the hell out of me.”

He smiled into her hair. “You should.”

---

The next morning, she woke first.

She slid out from under the covers, grabbed her camera, and walked barefoot out into the light.

The world was fog-soaked, soft and muted. The kind of morning that blurred the edges of everything. She took a few shots of the trees bending in the wind. The worn path leading to the beach. Her own footprints in the damp grass.

When she turned back toward the cottage, Caleb was on the porch.

Coffee in hand.

Watching her like he’d been waiting his whole life for her to return to frame.

She raised the camera.

He didn’t smile.

Just stared.

Click.

A perfect shot.

---

That afternoon, they walked the length of the beach in silence.

The tide was low. The air cool.

She told him about the gallery.

About the portrait.

About how she didn’t go to the second panel because she couldn’t stomach another glass of wine or another compliment from someone who didn’t know her.

He told her about the high school.

How they’d reopened the gym two days ago.

How the principal asked if he’d seen her.

“I said I didn’t know where you were,” he said. “Only where I hoped you’d go.”

She stopped walking.

He turned.

She kissed him without warning.

Fierce.

Grateful.

Real.

---

That night, they made love like it was the first time.

No hurry.

No need to prove anything.

No adrenaline.

Just heat.

Hands.

Mouths.

Her shirt unbuttoned slowly, his jeans pushed down with patient fingers. The way he entered her was deliberate, breathless, sacred.

They moved like they were writing something they never wanted to erase.

She came with his name in her mouth.

He followed with hers on a whisper.

And afterward, they stayed connected, still tangled, hearts slowing together like two watches set to the same time zone for the first time.

---

As they drifted toward sleep, Eva turned her face toward his.

“I think I want to stay,” she said.

“Just think?”

“I need to earn the rest.”

“You don’t,” he said.

But he let her say it anyway.

Because some promises mean more when they’re whispered from the edge of fear.

---

Chapter 14: Echoes and Edges

Willow Bay didn’t rush anything.
Not time.
Not healing.
Not forgiveness.

Eva woke to the rhythm of rain tapping against the window, Caleb’s hand resting low on her stomach, his breath steady in the hollow of her neck. The fire had died down to soft coals, and the air in the bedroom was cool, but neither of them moved.

She kept her eyes closed.

Not to pretend.
But to hold the moment still.

He stirred against her a few minutes later — just enough to pull her tighter, press a kiss against her shoulder, then settle again with a soft sigh.

She could’ve stayed like that for hours.
But her mind was already ahead of her body.
Flickering like film.
Fast.
Restless.

Old habits.

She slid from bed carefully, pulling one of his flannel shirts over her body and heading into the kitchen. The kettle hissed quietly on the stove as she stood by the window, mug in hand, watching the sea haze creep over the dunes.

Out here, it was easier to feel grounded.

Easier to pretend the rest of the world didn’t need her.

But the truth was: it still did.

There were emails. Gallery requests. Unanswered voicemails. A museum curator waiting for her to confirm the final quote to be painted on the wall beside her photo of Caleb.

And every time she looked at her phone, she felt like she was slipping between two versions of herself.

The one who had built a life on the road.

And the one who had started building a home right here, in the quiet of Caleb Moore’s bed.

---

She joined him later that morning as he walked the field.

The storm had been gentle, but the diamond was soaked again. Caleb moved across it with practiced ease — checking drain covers, inspecting the base paths. He wore worn jeans and an old hoodie, the hood pulled halfway over his head.

He looked like a postcard of someone she used to love.

And still did.

She leaned against the fence and watched him for a long time.

When he noticed her, he smiled — crooked, easy.

“You brought coffee?”

She held up the thermos.

He walked toward her, took it without hesitation, their fingers brushing.

“How’s the field?” she asked.

“Better than I expected.”

“Like us.”

That made him pause.

Then laugh, low and warm.

“Don’t jinx it,” he said.

---

They spent the rest of the day tucked inside the cottage.

She edited photos while he napped on the couch, one arm thrown over his face. Later, she made soup — actually edible this time — and he insisted it was better than his.

They didn’t kiss much.

Didn’t touch as often as they had before she left.

But when they did, it meant something.

A hand on the back of her neck as she passed.
A kiss to her temple when she handed him a mug of tea.
A fingertip tracing the inside of her wrist when she reached for his.

There was no need to name what was happening.

But it was becoming.

---

That night, as they lay in bed, Caleb asked the question they’d both been circling.

“What happens if you get the offer?”

Eva turned to look at him in the dim light. “What offer?”

“The one we both know is coming. Another series. Another city. Another contract that flies you somewhere far.”

She exhaled. “I don’t know.”

He didn’t press.

Didn’t push.

He just waited.

“I used to think I had to keep moving or I’d disappear,” she said.

“And now?”

“Now I think I might vanish if I don’t slow down.”

He nodded.

Then, quietly: “You can build something here.”

“With you?”

“With or without me,” he said. “But yes. I’d like it to be with me.”

Eva reached for his hand.

Curled her fingers around his.

“I don’t know if I can give up the part of me that left.”

“You don’t have to,” he said. “I just want the part that stayed.”

---

Later, they made love in the slowest way imaginable.

Not desperate.

Not fiery.

But reverent.

He kissed her like she was a promise kept.
She touched him like he was something she hadn’t known she could have without breaking.
Their bodies moved with a rhythm older than memory.
They didn’t say much.
They didn’t have to.

And afterward, she whispered the words she hadn’t said yet.

“I love you.”

He didn’t answer right away.

Just kissed her shoulder.

And pulled her closer.

But when she drifted off to sleep, she swore she heard him murmur it back.

So quiet she might’ve dreamt it.

But real enough to stay.

---

Chapter 15: The Stay

Staying felt like learning to breathe differently.

Eva had been in Willow Bay for eleven days since returning from San Francisco. Not long. But longer than she’d ever stayed in one place since she left for college at eighteen.

She hadn’t booked a flight.
Hadn’t signed another contract.
Hadn’t responded to the email from her gallery asking if she wanted to mount a spring show in Berlin.

And still—
She wasn’t sure if she was staying for him,
Or staying because of him.
There was a difference.
One that mattered.

---

The days unfolded slowly.

They cooked breakfast together most mornings—Caleb doing the actual cooking, Eva mostly responsible for coffee and commentary. He left for school around 8:30, usually with a kiss pressed to the side of her neck and a reminder to meet him at the field later. She spent the mornings editing photos or wandering the beach with her camera, catching gulls in mid-flight or driftwood tangled with seaweed.

It wasn’t glamorous.

But it was honest.

Afternoons, they worked side-by-side at the field—her snapping candids of practice drills or helping repair equipment, him coaching kids who still idolized him like he’d never aged past thirty.

Evenings, they walked the town or watched old movies on the projector he’d rigged in the living room. Sometimes they talked for hours. Sometimes they didn’t speak at all. Some nights they made love so slowly it felt like prayer. Others, they simply curled up and slept, exhausted but full.

It was a rhythm.

A gentle one.

But the trouble with rhythms?

Eventually, they ask for permanence.

---

On the twelfth day, it rained.

Hard.

Thunder rolled in off the ocean, rattling the windows of the cottage. The lights flickered once, then held. Eva sat on the floor with her laptop, editing photos while Caleb read beside her, legs stretched across the couch.

He looked up from his book and studied her in the firelight.

“You could teach here, you know.”

Eva blinked. “Teach?”

“Photography. Media. Whatever. The school’s been talking about adding new electives. You’d be amazing.”

“I’ve never taught anyone.”

“You’ve taught me a lot.”

She smiled. “That’s different.”

“Is it?”

She shut her laptop and set it aside.

“You want me to plant roots?”

“I want you to want to.”

Her heart thudded once—low, heavy.

“I don’t know how,” she said.

“You do,” he said softly. “You just think it means giving something up.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No,” he said. “It means building something.”

---

Later that night, she found herself rearranging the drawers in the bathroom.

It wasn’t intentional.

She was brushing her teeth when she realized she had three things in the medicine cabinet—face cream, toothpaste, a hair tie—and everything else still lived in her duffel bag.

She unpacked slowly. One item at a time.

Toothbrush.
Razor.
Deodorant.
Moisturizer.
Concealer she hadn’t worn in weeks.

Then she opened the lower drawer and found Caleb’s things—clippers, a box of bandages, a half-used roll of athletic tape.

It looked like a place someone lived.

And suddenly, her stomach flipped.

She left the bathroom without finishing.

---

At dinner the next day, he asked what was wrong.

She didn’t answer immediately.

They were eating pasta. Drinking cheap red wine. The table was set with mismatched plates, a linen napkin folded between them. The scene was too perfect, which made the panic rise faster.

“I’m scared,” she said finally.

He didn’t flinch.

“Of what?”

“That this is just a pause,” she whispered. “That I’m pretending I can stay, and one day I’ll wake up and run again. And it’ll hurt worse because I let myself believe I’d changed.”

Caleb reached across the table.

Took her hand.

“You’re not pretending,” he said. “You’re trying.”

“And what if trying isn’t enough?”

He looked at her—really looked.

“Then I’ll love the part of you that tried. And I’ll miss the part of you that ran.”

---

On the fifteenth day, he cleared out a drawer in his dresser.

Didn’t announce it.

Just left it open, empty, with a sticky note on the bottom that read:

“You can stay even if you don’t unpack all the way.”

She stared at it for a long time.

Didn’t put anything in it.

Not yet.

But she folded the note and tucked it into her journal.

---

They didn’t have sex that night.

Not because they didn’t want to.

Because when he touched her—when his hand found her rib cage under her shirt, when his lips grazed her collarbone—she started to cry.

Softly. Quietly. Without warning.

He didn’t stop.

Just kissed her forehead and held her tighter.

And she whispered, “I don’t want to ruin this.”

He whispered back, “Then let it ruin me. I’ll survive.”

---

Chapter 16: The Undoing Days

It started small.

An email Eva opened and never responded to.
A camera battery she forgot to charge.
An untouched cup of coffee that went cold beside her on the porch.

Little things.
Forgettable things.
Until they weren’t.

Until the cold coffee became three days in a row.
Until the missed email became a politely urgent follow-up.
Until she found herself staring at a photo of the Willow Bay shoreline and wondering if it was too still.

---

Caleb didn’t press.

He watched, of course.

Noticed when she pulled away first during a kiss.
Noticed when she skipped joining him at the field.
Noticed when she didn’t sleep as easily, her body tense even in his arms.

But he didn’t say anything.

He knew better than to corner her.

Eva had always bloomed on her own time or not at all.

So instead, he waited.

Let her drift.

Hoped she’d come back on her own.

---

It was a Wednesday when she walked to the beach alone and didn’t come back until long after dark.

She left a note on the counter—two words: Just walking.

Caleb came home to an empty house. He made dinner anyway. Sat on the porch with a plate for her, just in case.

She didn’t answer her phone.

Didn’t send a message.

Just showed up around 9 p.m., hair damp, cheeks pink with wind.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

But didn’t come inside.

She stood at the edge of the porch like it might break under her.

“I didn’t mean to stay out so long,” she said.

“You don’t need to explain.”

She looked at him then, eyes glassy. “That’s the problem. I don’t know how to explain anything anymore.”

He rose, slowly.

Crossed to her.

Didn’t reach for her.

Just stood there.

“I’m not asking you to,” he said. “I’m asking you to let me stay anyway.”

---

They didn’t make love that night.

But they lay in bed, fully clothed, facing each other.

And when she finally reached for his hand, she gripped it like a lifeline.

---

The next day, she wandered into the darkroom.

She hadn’t printed anything in a week.

Her rolls were piling up, unprocessed, unlabeled.

But she chose one — the roll from the first night she came back from San Francisco. The one with the photos of Caleb asleep, the sea in fog, and her own reflection caught by accident in the glass.

She developed the images slowly.

One tray at a time.

Her hands steady, her breath quiet.

When the final image emerged — Caleb’s back turned, one shoulder bare, a trail of light across his spine — she felt something break behind her ribs.

Not a clean break.

A fracture.

The kind that doesn’t make a sound but changes how you move.

---

That night, she cried into his chest again.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered.

“Then let’s do it wrong together,” he said.

---

On Friday, he found her packing.

Not her whole bag. Not loudly.

Just a few things. Her laptop. Her charger. A stack of memory cards.

He leaned against the doorframe.

Said nothing for a moment.

Then: “Is it forever?”

She froze.

“No.”

He nodded.

“Then go. If you have to.”

She turned, eyes burning. “Aren’t you going to stop me?”

“No,” he said. “Because you don’t belong to me. But this house, this town, this thing—it belongs to you. Whether you run from it or not.”

She broke then.

Sank to the floor.

He joined her.

And they sat like that for a long time, neither reaching, neither speaking, just staying.

Together in the undoing.

---

Chapter 17: What We Leave Open

Eva left before dawn.

Not because she couldn’t sleep—she’d barely slept in days. Not because she wanted to disappear. Not even because she was running.

She left because sometimes loving someone means giving yourself enough space to remember why.

She stood in the dark kitchen, the cottage still full of Caleb’s breath, his warmth folded into the pillow she hadn’t touched. She brewed coffee silently. Didn’t leave a note. Didn’t wake him. She wasn’t sure she could look him in the eye and still go.

So instead, she let the screen door click softly behind her and drove into the slow bleeding edge of morning.

---

Her car hummed down the coast road, headlights cutting through fog. The sky turned steel-blue, then bone-white, then something soft and pale with promise. She didn’t have a plan. Not really. Just a direction: north.

She turned the radio on but didn’t hear it.

The voice in her head was louder.

You’re not breaking anything, Caleb had said.

But she felt broken anyway.

Because he hadn’t asked her to stay.
And she hadn’t asked him to follow.

They were both leaving the door open.

And that was somehow harder than slamming it shut.

---

By midmorning, she pulled off at a small overlook near Cape Arago.

The water crashed loudly below — not angry, but constant. The cliffs were jagged and wind-worn, their edges blurred by sea spray. She stepped out of the car barefoot, camera slung over her shoulder, salt already slicking her skin.

She didn’t shoot right away.

She stood there, toes on the gravel, hair whipped across her face, and tried to remember what it had felt like to photograph the world when it wasn’t full of him.

She took a single photo.

Then another.

Then five.

By the time the sun broke fully through the clouds, she had filled the first memory card.

She sat on the hood of the car with the wind in her ears and cried without making a sound.

---

Back at the motel — a coastal place that smelled faintly of wet carpet and pine — she downloaded the photos onto her laptop.

Every shot was beautiful.

Wrecked, quiet, balanced.

She hated them.

Not because they were bad.

But because they were proof she could still make something without him.

And that made her ache more than anything else.

---

She stayed for three nights.

Didn’t call.

Didn’t post.

Didn’t reply to the gallery’s fourth follow-up about a fall exhibition in Montreal.

She walked. She shot. She slept like a woman under water.

She dreamed of Caleb every night — nothing erotic, nothing wild. Just him in the cottage, barefoot, drinking coffee. Him reading on the porch. Him turning toward her with that quiet look of I’ve been here the whole time.

She woke up crying twice.

Didn’t try to stop it.

---

On the fourth morning, she drove back.

Not fast.

Not dramatic.

Just steady.

Her hands didn’t shake on the wheel.

But her pulse skipped when she saw the Willow Bay sign again.

---

She didn’t go to the cottage first.

She went to the field.

It was late afternoon, the sun low and golden, kids shouting across the diamond. Caleb stood at the edge of the dugout, arms crossed, talking to one of the assistant coaches.

He looked up once.

Paused.

Saw her.

He didn’t wave.

Didn’t smile.

But his shoulders relaxed.

And she could breathe again.

---

That evening, she stood on the porch as he approached.

No words.

Just him.

Barefoot.

Holding a mug of tea he didn’t offer.

“I didn’t know if you’d come back,” he said.

“I didn’t either.”

He nodded.

“You mad?”

“No,” he said. “Just… trying to keep the door open.”

“I saw it,” she whispered. “The door. Still open.”

“And?”

“I walked through it.”

He stepped forward.

Kissed her forehead.

“You always could,” he murmured. “Even when you didn’t think you could.”

---

They didn’t make love that night.

But she undressed slowly in front of him.

Took his hand.

Led him to bed.

And when she laid beside him, she pulled his hand to her chest, right over her heart.

“Don’t let me lie to myself,” she said.

“I won’t.”

“Even if I leave again?”

“You’re allowed to leave,” he whispered. “But don’t lie about why.”

---

In the morning, she unpacked one more drawer.

---

Chapter 18: A Place That Waits

Eva didn’t unpack everything.
She just stopped keeping her suitcase by the door.

It wasn’t a grand declaration. No fireworks. No ceremony. Just a quiet shift — like how you stop listening for thunder once the sky stays clear long enough.

Her socks ended up in his drawer. Her shampoo replaced his. Her camera bag stayed by the couch, not zipped and prepped, but open — half-forgotten.

She started making the bed.

Not because he asked. Not because she wanted things neat.

But because she liked pulling the blanket tight, smoothing the sheets, touching something that would wait for her to return.

---

They found a rhythm again.

But it was different this time.

Not the urgent, post-reunion hunger.
Not the nervous, slow-burn anticipation.
Something steadier.

Caleb worked. Coached. Let her come to him. Eva took photos again, but she stopped framing every image like it had to prove something.

Some mornings she joined him for breakfast. Some she stayed in bed.
Some nights they made love until they both collapsed into sleep, sweat-soaked and breathless.
Others, they read in silence, their legs tangled under the blanket, their hands brushing just often enough to say: I’m here.

It was ordinary.

And that terrified her.

Because ordinary had never felt like this.

---

She went with him to the market one Sunday.

He walked beside her like it was the most natural thing in the world. She carried a basket, and he carried the bread. They argued gently about which tomatoes were best for sauce. A woman she didn’t recognize gave her a knowing look. A teenager asked if Caleb was going to coach the summer league again.

Eva watched him talk.

Watched the way he smiled at people. The way they smiled back.

And for the first time, she didn’t feel like an outsider to his life.

She felt like someone slowly being written into it.

---

Later that afternoon, back at the cottage, she found him folding laundry.

He held up one of her shirts. A soft black tank top.

“Want me to put it with mine?”

She blinked. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

She nodded.

He folded it carefully. Set it in the drawer beside his.

And something inside her melted a little.

Because it wasn’t a demand.

Just an invitation.

---

They made dinner together.

It rained while they cooked, soft and steady, tapping against the windows. Eva moved around the kitchen in socked feet, chopping garlic, humming to herself. Caleb stirred the sauce with one hand, sipped from a glass of wine with the other.

“Why does this feel so… impossible?” she asked after a while.

He looked up. “What?”

“This,” she said, gesturing around them. “Us. Still being here.”

“Because it’s simple,” he said. “And you’re used to things being hard.”

She thought about that.

Let the truth of it sting.

“I don’t know how to trust peace,” she admitted.

“Then start with trusting me.”

He said it like he didn’t expect her to say yes.

But she wanted to.

More than anything.

---

They made love slowly that night.

The kind of slow where the whole body listens.
Where her hands moved across his chest like she was learning him all over again.
Where he kissed her between every whispered breath.

He undressed her like a song he already knew the melody to.
She let him because she was tired of being armor.

They didn’t rush.

They didn’t need to.

His mouth found her neck, her collarbone, the dip between her ribs. Her nails scratched gently down his back. When he sank into her, they both inhaled like something holy had returned.

No noise. No games.

Just heat.

And quiet.

And want.

When she came, it was with her forehead pressed to his. When he followed, it was with his mouth on her chest, whispering her name like a vow.

---

Afterward, she curled into him.

Sweat cooling.

Heartbeat steady.

“I’m scared,” she said.

“I know.”

“But I’m still here.”

“I know that, too.”

She pressed her lips to his shoulder.

And for the first time, she didn’t ask if she’d earned the right to stay.

---

Chapter 19: Where We Land

The light in Willow Bay changed in late summer.

It softened, flattened, leaned more gold than white. The mornings stretched long and quiet, dew clinging to porch steps and windows fogging faintly from the inside. The tide came in slow. The sky held its breath between storms.

Eva noticed all of it.

Not through her lens—but in how her body moved through it.

She woke earlier. Walked slower. Ate without her phone next to the plate. Her suitcase remained under the bed, half-forgotten. Her inbox went unchecked for days.

She wasn’t on vacation anymore.

She was present.

And the terrifying truth was… she liked it.

---

Caleb never asked for confirmation.

Never said, So, you’re staying.

He just adjusted.

One drawer turned into two.
Her toothbrush appeared beside his in the holder without comment.
Her boots joined his by the door.

They shared groceries, bills, bed space, Sunday errands. She helped sand a bench he was refinishing for the school’s front courtyard. He ordered her a new lens hood after she dropped hers on the rocks near the cove.

Their love didn’t declare itself.

It made coffee and folded laundry.

And she’d never felt more vulnerable.

---

One morning, she found him sitting on the porch, holding one of her cameras.

Not her workhorse Leica.
Her old Canon — scratched, beat-up, duct-taped on the battery latch.

“Didn’t know you still had this,” he said, holding it up like a relic.

“Barely works,” she said.

“Still turns on.”

“Like me,” she said with a smile. “Barely works, but I’m still here.”

He looked at her.

That long, slow look that made her feel pinned but safe.

“I’m glad you are.”

---

That afternoon, she followed him to the rec center.

The storm months ago had left part of the roof leaking, and he’d volunteered to oversee the repairs. She wandered the empty halls while he spoke with the contractor. The building still smelled like gym socks and bleach. She found a photo of him on the wall from his senior year — all limbs and grin, a baseball trophy balanced in one hand.

She stared at it longer than she expected to.

Not out of nostalgia.

But to remind herself that the boy in that frame had become the man who handed her his heart with no contract, no safety net, no guarantees.

He still had that grin.

But he’d grown into it.

---

That night, they argued.

It wasn’t loud.

Wasn’t dramatic.

Just sharp around the edges.

She’d missed a call from the gallery — again.
They wanted an answer about Montreal.
She hadn’t told him.

He saw the email open on her screen.

“You weren’t going to tell me?” he asked.

“I didn’t want it to be a thing.”

“You live here now,” he said, quiet but firm. “It’s a thing.”

She didn’t reply right away.

Then: “I haven’t signed anything.”

“But you’re thinking about it.”

“I’m allowed to.”

“Of course you are,” he said. “But I’m allowed to be scared, too.”

That stopped her.

He wasn’t angry.

He was hurt.

And somehow, that was worse.

---

They didn’t sleep wrapped around each other that night.

But they didn’t sleep apart either.

She curled toward the wall.

He curled behind her.

And when he touched her wrist in the dark, she turned her hand over to meet his.

---

In the morning, she called the gallery.

Told them she wasn’t going to Montreal.

Told them she needed more time to be where she was.

They offered her a smaller feature in spring instead.

She accepted.

When she hung up, she stepped out onto the porch, mug in hand.

Caleb was already there.

“I’m not going to Montreal,” she said.

He didn’t smile.

Didn’t rush to her.

Just held out his hand.

She took it.

Sat down beside him.

They watched the fog roll over the water.

Said nothing.

Didn’t need to.

---

That afternoon, they walked the beach.

The tide was low, sand wet and packed underfoot. She took photos again — not obsessively. Just instinctively. She didn’t check her exposure after every shot. Didn’t worry about framing every detail.

She let the place speak.

Let her body respond.

At one point, he reached down and laced his fingers through hers without a word.

She squeezed his hand gently and whispered, “I think I’m landing.”

“You are.”

“You believe that?”

“I’ve seen the way you unpack your shoes,” he said. “That’s commitment.”

She laughed, full and surprised.

And the sound of it echoed down the shoreline.

---

That night, she made dinner.

It was simple — pasta, garlic bread, a salad that leaned too heavily on croutons.

He sat at the kitchen table, sipping wine, watching her move around the stove in bare feet and one of his shirts.

At one point, he said, “This feels like something we don’t have to question anymore.”

She turned to face him.

“I still question it.”

“I know,” he said. “But you stay anyway.”

She walked over.

Sat in his lap.

Held his face between her hands.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“You said that before.”

“I’m saying it again.”

“Say it tomorrow,” he said.

“I will.”

---

Chapter 20: How It Holds

Fall arrived quietly in Willow Bay.

The kind of fall that didn’t announce itself with color, but with the hush of air thickening, the sky turning to pearl, and the sea growing colder in its touch. The wind shifted directions. The mornings turned sharper. The gulls grew louder.

And Eva stayed.

She didn’t mark it with ceremony.

No dramatic declaration.

No public decision.

She simply didn’t leave.

And in the staying, something inside her settled.

---

There was no moment when Caleb asked her to move in.

She just…did.

Bit by bit.

A box of books on the floor beside the couch.
A set of mugs she preferred.
Her laptop on his desk.
Her underwear in his laundry.

She folded into his life the way a hand folds into another—familiar, imperfect, just enough pressure to mean something.

One morning, she caught him folding her jeans with careful fingers and felt something sting beneath her ribs.

Not fear.

Not regret.

Just relief.

---

They built a new rhythm.

Shared work. Shared space. Shared silence.

He coached late into the fall season.
She began shooting a new series—portraits of Willow Bay. Not for a gallery. Not for her agent. Just…because.

The woman at the bakery.
The dock worker with the crooked hands.
The field in the morning when the mist still clung to the grass.

She captured it all with soft, unhurried hands.

Not to prove anything.

But to remember how it felt to belong.

---

One night, the power went out.

A storm rolled in—rain hard and urgent, wind battering the windows.

They lit candles. Made grilled cheese on the gas stove. Pulled the mattress into the living room like kids.

It was stupid. Intimate. Perfect.

They lay in the dark beneath the quilt, listening to the wind whip the trees.

Eva rested her head on Caleb’s chest.

“Do you think it lasts?” she asked quietly.

“This?”

“Us.”

He ran his fingers through her hair.

“It’s not about lasting,” he said. “It’s about holding. Day by day. Night by night. Sometimes breath by breath.”

She didn’t respond.

Just let herself be held.

---

They made love in the dark.

Not out of desperation.

Not out of relief.

But because it was the only thing that made sense.

He kissed her with slow hands and open breath.
She arched beneath him like she remembered what it meant to be wanted without condition.

They moved together like they’d been doing it forever.

She came with her face pressed to his throat, whispering thank you like a litany.

He followed with a groan, her name in his mouth like salvation.

Afterward, they stayed connected—body to body, skin to skin.

She didn’t cry.

Didn’t overthink.

Just existed in the place she had chosen.

---

In the morning, the storm had passed.

The house was quiet.

The sea was louder.

Caleb brought her coffee in bed.

She reached for it, still naked under the covers, hair a mess.

He watched her with soft eyes.

“Tomorrow, I’m shooting portraits at the school,” she said.

He grinned. “You’re staying long enough to take faculty headshots?”

“I’m staying.”

She said it without blinking.

Without ceremony.

And he nodded, like he’d known all along.

“I left a drawer empty,” he said. “The big one.”

“I’ll fill it,” she whispered.

And this time, she did.

---

Epilogue

One year later.
Willow Bay was still small.
Still damp. Still stubborn. Still beautiful.

The bakery now carried Eva’s postcards behind the register — black-and-white prints from her “Faces of the Bay” series. She’d printed them on heavy matte stock, signed the corners, and never once corrected anyone when they referred to her as the town photographer.

Caleb kept one in his truck.
Another on his desk at the school.
And one — his favorite — taped to the inside of the kitchen cabinet. It showed Eva on the shoreline, camera in hand, turned slightly toward the viewer, windblown, unposed, not even smiling. Just real.

She had taken it by accident using a timer.
He’d stolen it from her hard drive.
She never asked for it back.

---

They still lived in the cottage.
Still fought over who got the last slice of toast.
Still slept tangled more often than not.

She hadn’t left the country in twelve months.
And that terrified her.
But not as much as the fact that she didn’t miss it like she thought she would.

The camera still left her side.
But not the man.

---

The night of the winter storm, the power went out again.

This time, they were ready.
Candles already staged. Wood chopped. The mattress already moved before the wind even picked up. They lay beside the fireplace, Eva curled into Caleb’s chest, her hand under his shirt, his breath steady at the crown of her head.

“Tell me something real,” she murmured, voice soft with wine and firelight.

He was quiet for a moment.

Then: “I knew I loved you when I hated your coffee but drank it anyway.”

She laughed against his skin. “You still drink it.”

“I’ve adjusted,” he said.

“You’re not the only one.”

---

The next morning, they made pancakes.

She wore his T-shirt.

He stood behind her, hands on her hips, whispering things in her ear that had nothing to do with syrup and everything to do with what he planned to do to her once the plates were cleared.

She laughed.
Blushed.
Melted.

And later, in their bed with the windows fogged and the fire still warm, she pulled him close and whispered, “I would’ve missed this. All of it. If I’d run again.”

He didn’t say I know.
Didn’t say I told you so.

Just kissed her.

Because some things are better held than answered.

---

Eva’s favorite photo now lived on the nightstand.

Not one she’d taken.
One Caleb had snapped without her knowing.

She was in the garden, knees in the dirt, a camera strap slung across her chest, hair twisted up in a knot. There was dirt on her cheek. Light on her collarbone.

She looked… happy.

Not posed.
Not perfect.
Just exactly who she’d become.

And when people asked if she missed the road, she said the same thing every time.

“Not yet.”

Because she didn’t have to outrun anything anymore.

Not when home was a place that waited.

Not when love looked like this.

---

End of Epilogue