I took another sip of whiskey, letting the burn fill the space where an honest response could go. "It's the only one you're getting."
He didn't give up and back off like most people when they hit one of my conversational barriers. Tilting his head, he studied me with his clear blue eyes. "What made you choose Ironhook specifically? Of all the places where you could disappear, why here?"
It was a direct question. Most people danced around the obvious with me, but not Eric. He was incapable of avoiding getting to the point.
I sipped more whiskey. "You ask a lot of questions about me for someone supposedly researching coastal erosion."
"Occupational hazard." His grin lit up his entire face. "I've always been curious about everything, and it's always driven people insane, even my best friend, Ziggy, sometimes."
"I can imagine."
"My dad used to joke that I'd ask the weather questions if I thought it would give me a straight answer." A self-deprecating laugh bubbled up. "He wasn't wrong."
I watched how his hands moved when he talked. Unconscious gestures punctuated his words. His animated delivery made the cottage feel more alive and less like a tomb.
He leaned forward slightly. "You didn't answer my question. Why Ironhook? It's not exactly accessible. Twenty miles fromthe nearest anything, ferry service that's spotty at best, and winters that would test a polar bear's patience. You could have found isolation anywhere."
His persistence might have annoyed me. It could have triggered every defensive instinct I'd honed over the past decade. Instead, Eric impressed me. It took guts to keep pushing when someone signaled they wanted to be left alone.
In a softer tone, he tried again to lift the stone and peer underneath. "You're not hiding out here for the view."
"Drop it." I wasn't ready.
I expected him to apologize or change the subject to something safer. That's what people usually did when they bumped up against the boundaries I'd spent years constructing.
Instead, he commented about himself. I barely heard it above the storm. "I know about running. I left Whistleport to breathe."
His simple honesty landed with force. I studied his face in the flickering candlelight.
For the first time in longer than I could calculate, someone was looking at me and seeing something other than a cautionary tale or a puzzle to be solved.
He saw someone who understood what it meant to run.
Eric was building a bridge I didn't expect. His words—I know about running—cracked something open inside me.
"This place..." I started, then stopped, surprised by my own willingness to speak. Perhaps it was the whiskey or being swaddled by the storm, cutting us off from the rest of the world and all its expectations. "It's not about peace. It's a shield."
Eric nodded slowly.
I continued. "Small towns remember, and they remind you every damn time you think you might be ready to forget."
"God, yes." Eric's laugh was weary and mirthless. "Try being the fire chief's kid in a place where everyone knows your business before you do. I couldn't buy a scone at Tidal Groundswithout three people calling my dad to make sure I wasn't developing a sugar addiction."
I nodded. "Everyone knows your name before you walk in the room."
"Because they know his," Eric finished, and the bitterness in his voice was so familiar it made my teeth ache. "Thomas Callahan's boy. That's all I was for the longest time. Not Eric, only an extension of someone else's reputation…and I put a happy face on it."
I set my whiskey glass down on the side table. "You said your dad's the fire chief. Callahan. That should have clued me in immediately."
"He's been at it for twenty-seven years and counting. Thomas Callahan, Whistleport's finest. Never met a burning building he wouldn't run into or a person he wouldn't pull out of whatever mess they'd created for themselves."
Memories started rushing back at gale force. A summer night full of twisted metal and shattered glass, the taste of blood in my mouth, and the wail of sirens cutting through the darkness. Strong hands pulled me from the wreckage that should have been my grave, and a calm voice told me to stay awake; help was coming.
"He ever mention an accident on graduation night?" I was asking the question that would raise so many more. "Two guys out for a joy ride? That kind of crash doesn't happen often in a little town like Whistleport."
Eric froze. His eyes widened, pupils dilating in the flickering candlelight as the pieces clicked into place. "That was you?"
I nodded, reaching for my whiskey again, giving my hands something to do. "Your dad pulled me out of a car that should have been my coffin. I spent the next three hours in surgery while they put my knee back together with pins and prayers."
