I nod.
He's right. He's usually right, which is annoying but also useful.
I walk back to my truck, my clothes clinging cold to my skin, my hair dripping down my neck. The weight settles into my chest.
I spent four years separated from my sealskin. Four years fighting a blood feud to win it back, to end what my family started, to make myself free enough to return. Four years of that particular ache—the loss of your own skin, the wrongness of being incomplete. I thought that was the worst pain I'd know.
It's nothing compared to this.
Standing four inches from her in the rain and not closing the distance. Being near her every day and feeling the gulf between us. The physical proximity that isn't closeness. That's the loss that lives in my bones. That's the weight I'll carry however long it takes.
The choice I made when I came back here, the choice to stand four inches away and not move. It's a weight that will live in me every day I see her. Every day I don't reach for her. Every day I prove I'm not the man who takes without asking—not her choices, not her safety, not her future. It's the weight of restraint, and it's heavy, and it's mine to carry.
However long that is.
Whatever it costs.
I will show her I've changed. Day by day. Moment by moment. Without expecting anything in return.
And if that's not enough, if four years of becoming better still isn't enough to earn back what I broke, then at least I'll know I tried. At least I'll know I gave her the choice instead of taking it away.
At least I'll know I loved her the right way this time, even if the right way means loving her from a distance she never closes.
I start the truck.
The lake is silver in my rearview mirror, beautiful and indifferent, holding all its secrets the way it always has.
I drive home.
CHAPTER 9
CORA
I spendthe evening after the storm updating the booking system and responding to tour inquiries. My hands are steady on the keyboard but my shoulders ache from hauling boats, from bracing against wind, from holding myself upright on the dock four inches from Muir while the rain came down. The adrenaline has burned off and left me hollow. Restless. I reorder supplies. I eat leftover sinigang standing at the kitchen counter, the sour tamarind sharp on my tongue, my body wanting fuel it doesn't want to sit down for.
Rex texts at half past nine:you okay?
I text back:doing inventory
Rex texts back:that's a no then
I put my phone face-down and finish my sinigang. I go to bed. I don't sleep well.
I find Muir the next morning at the equipment shed.
He's always there by seven forty-five, doing gear checks or line maintenance, absorbing tasks into his routine without beingasked. When I come around the corner of the Snack Hut at ten past eight, the shed door is open and there's the sound of something being methodically worked through inside. The morning air is cool and clean, the lake smell mixing with pine and the faint diesel tang from the dock.
The shed is small. Twelve feet by sixteen, shelving along three walls, dive equipment racked to the right, paddleboard gear to the left, workbench along the back. It smells like neoprene and lake water and well-maintained equipment. The light comes in low through the door, still golden at this hour, catching dust motes in the air.
Muir is at the workbench.
He's working on a wetsuit zipper that seized up yesterday. The zipper pull is set in the vice, lubricant beside it, his hands applying careful steady pressure. He's wearing the grey San Pedro Eco-Tours shirt, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and the morning light turns his hair nearly white. His forearms are corded with muscle, his hands broad and capable and unhurried. There's a quality to his stillness that fills the space—not tense, not waiting, just present. Occupying the shed the way water occupies a container.
“Cora,” he says, without turning.
“The zipper on the three-millimetre,” I say. “I was going to get to it.”
“I know.” He works the pull once, testing. “I got to it first.”