"And sometimes you realize you don't want to go back at all."
"That too."
They finished dinner in a different kind of silence. Not the awkward kind from this morning, and not the careful kind from the truck. This was the silence of two people who'd glimpsed something real in each other and decided not to push.
After, they did the dishes together. She washed; he dried. Their elbows bumped in the narrow space, and he didn't step away as quickly as he should have.
When the last plate was put away, she dried her hands on a towel and looked at him. "Thank you, Brian. Not just for dinner. For all of it."
"You made dinner," he pointed out.
"You know what I mean."
He did. That was the problem.
"Get some sleep," he said, his voice rougher than he intended. "Tomorrow we can figure out the rest."
She nodded and headed down the hall. At her door, she paused and looked back. "Goodnight, Brian."
"Goodnight, Tessa."
The door closed softly behind her.
He stood in the kitchen for a long time, listening to the cottage settle around him. The creak of floorboards, the tick of the clock, the soft rhythm of waves against the shore. And beneath it all, the knowledge that there was someone on the other side of the wall who understood what it meant to carry weight you couldn't put down.
Three days, he reminded himself.
But even as he thought it, he knew three days was going to feel very different from what he'd expected.
Chapter Three
Tessa woke to the low rumble of waves and the smell of coffee drifting under her door.
For a moment, she didn't know where she was. The ceiling was wrong, the light was wrong, and the sounds were all unfamiliar. Then the flannel against her forearms registered, soft and worn, and the pieces stitched themselves together. Copper Moon. The cottage that wasn't supposed to be occupied. The man who'd let her stay anyway.
She sat up slowly, pressing her palms against her eyes. They felt puffy, and there was a dull ache behind her forehead that meant she'd cried more than she wanted to admit. The tears had come again after she'd closed her door last night, quiet and steady in the dark. She'd buried her face in the pillow so Brian wouldn't hear.
The soft tick of a wall clock filled the silence. Somewhere down the hall, cabinet doors opened and closed. A chair scraped against the floor. The house had an easy rhythm this morning, unhurried and sure. It wasn't her rhythm, but she was inside it now.
She pulled on jeans and sneakers, tucked her curls behind her ears, and shrugged back into her father's flannel. Old habits made her fold the top sheet, smooth the coverlet, and plump the pillow. She set her toiletries in a neat row on the dresser, bottles arranged by height. Put things in order. It didn't fix anything, but it gave her hands somewhere to go.
When she stepped into the kitchen, Brian was already at the stove. He wore jeans and a gray T-shirt that stretched across his shoulders, his feet bare on the worn hardwood. He glanced up from the eggs he was scrambling, and something flickered across his face. Not quite a smile, but not the guarded look from yesterday either.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning." Her voice came out scratchy, and she cleared her throat. "I thought we agreed I'd make my own breakfast today."
"I was already up. Seemed stupid to make you wait." He tipped his head toward the coffee pot. "Help yourself."
She found a mug in the cabinet, the same one she'd used yesterday, and poured herself a cup. The coffee was strong and dark, the kind that meant business. She took a sip and felt it cut through the fog in her head.
"Thank you," she said. "For the coffee. And for not making me feel like more of an intruder than I already do."
He turned from the stove, spatula in hand. "You're not an intruder. You're a victim of bad paperwork." He slid eggs onto two plates and added toast from the toaster. "There's a difference."
She took the plate he offered and sat at the small table by the window. Outside, the morning light played across the water, turning it silver and gold. A pair of gulls wheeled overhead, their cries sharp against the quiet.
Brian sat across from her, leaving the length of the table between them. They ate in silence for a few minutes, the comfortable kind that didn't need filling. She found herself relaxing into it, letting the tension in her shoulders ease.