I listened. The ocean's rhythm filled the silence—waves advancing and retreating. The sound had been my constantcompanion for sixteen years, but for once, it sounded different. I imagined it sweeping away the past, forgiving me.
"It's washing everything away." Eric traced patterns on my chest with a fingertip. "All the doubt and all the fear. It's all gone."
He was right. The ocean was taking my carefully constructed arguments for why this couldn't work and why I didn't deserve happiness. Wave by wave, doubt by doubt, until all that remained was this: his warm body against mine and his steady breathing.
The nineteen-year-old inside me spoke. "I've been so scared."
"I know." Eric's arms tightened around me.
Above us, a shooting star streaked across the sky—just one, not the shower we'd watched weeks ago, but bright enough to catch our attention. Eric lifted his head to follow its path.
"Make a wish," he said softly.
I looked at him—hair mussed from my fingers and lips swollen from kissing. I realized I didn't need to wish for anything. Everything I'd been scared to want was already in my arms, solid and real, and choosing to stay.
"Already came true," I told him.
We dressed slowly, reluctant to break the spell of the clifftop but knowing we'd both freeze if we stayed much longer. The walk back to the cottage felt different than the climb up. Where before I'd been leading Eric toward my confession and an explanation for why we couldn't be together, now we walked side by side, hands linked, sharing the path like we shared everything else.
Eric stopped walking and turned to face me. "Wes Hunter, you are worth everything I'm doing here. You're worth staying for, fighting for, and choosing you every day for the rest of my life if you'll let me."
I pulled him close and kissed him there on the path.
The cottage came into view through the beach grass, its windows glowing with the warm light of the oil lamps we'd left burning. For sixteen years, it wasn't my refuge. It was my self-constructed prison.
Tonight, at last, it looked like home.
Eric opened the front door, and we stepped inside together. Everything was different. The narrow hallway that had seemed designed for one person now felt like it could accommodate two. The kitchen table where I'd eaten solitary meals for years looked like it was meant for conversation, shared coffee, and the comfortable chaos of someone else's research materials.
Eric looked around like he was seeing it for the first time. "This place doesn't feel lonely anymore."
"It's not just mine anymore. It's ours."
We stood there in my kitchen—our kitchen—while the lighthouse beam swept across the windows and the ocean whispered its ancient promises against the shore.
Eric moved closer. "So, what happens now?"
I looked at him—the brilliant, beautiful man who'd somehow seen through my defenses to the person I'd forgotten I could be—and felt something I hadn't experienced since I left Whistleport.
Hope.
"Now we figure it out together."
The cottage settled around us with creaks and sighs, adjusting to accommodate two heartbeats instead of one.
Chapter seventeen
Eric
The scratch of pencil against paper drew my attention. Wes hunched over his weather log on the kitchen table, recording barometric pressure readings. His coffee steamed beside the notebook, untouched while he cross-referenced yesterday's predictions against what had actually materialized.
Pine needles tapped against the window glass in the morning breeze. The air outside was crisp and cold, meaning October was settling in for real—sharp enough to make us grateful for flannel and warm mugs.
"I need to make a supply run." I settled my mug on the coffee table where my research notes sprawled in organized chaos. "Whistleport. Few things I can't get from the co-op here."
Wes glanced up. "Ferry runs this afternoon if the weather holds. If you're quick, you'll be back by nightfall."
I spoke in a tone as casual as I could manage. "You could come with me."
