Chapter 7
NATALIE
It was Sunday, and I couldn’t sit still.
The forecast wasn’t a siren yet—more like a drumbeat under everything—but staying home felt like cheating on my own rules. I didn’t want to be trapped at my desk either, tied to the monitors until my eyes throbbed. So, I walked.
I told myself it was outreach—check the drains we’d flagged, warn the shop owners who actually listened, make a list for Monday—but really it was breathing with motion.
I cut a loop around the office because that’s where my feet always took me when I needed to think: Meeting to East Bay and back, the peninsula’s spine under my soles, the map in my head overlaid on brick and shade.
The heat sat heavy and clean. Live oaks threw lacework shadows over the sidewalk.
A street musician tuned a fiddle near the Market, a wobbly G string turning true.
I had a stack of one-page flyers in my bag—tide times, the four most flood-stupid corners, a line about not turning your sedan into a boat—and I handed them off like party favors.
Some people smiled and thanked me. A few rolled their eyes.
A woman in a visor told me the city should “fix the drains like any place with sense,” and I smiled without teeth and told her we were very good at fixing, we weren’t quite as good at making physics fall in love with us.
I rounded the corner a little too fast, and walked into a wall. The wall had heat, and muscle, and the clean, faint smell of soap. My coffee cup jolted, sloshing a hot kiss over my knuckles. I sucked in a breath, staggered back, and his hand caught my elbow on instinct, steady and sure.
“Easy,” a low voice said, wry and calm at the same time. “If you’re patrolling for stray horses, this one’s on foot.”
I looked up. The world tightened to a point.
Horse Guy. The one who’d looked like a myth the ocean had coughed up.
Up close, in daylight, he wasn’t softer.
He was clearer. Broad shoulders under a plain T-shirt that didn’t have anything to prove.
Scars like white slashes against tan on his forearm, another set peeking at the collarbone where dog tags flashed before he tucked them back.
The claw lay against his chest, the curve of it brutal and beautiful, strung on dark leather.
His eyes were the color of stormwater before it goes ugly—steady, reflective, hiding depth.
“Yes,” I heard myself say. “On foot.” It came out breathless and amused.
He let go of my elbow when I was steady, not a second sooner. The heat of his hand lingered like a stamp. I should have moved. I didn’t.
“You from yesterday,” he said. A statement, not a question. “Badge and a ponytail.”
“Guilty,” I said, finding a smile because my body wouldn’t let me find air. “No badge today. I’m on good behavior.”
I’d earned that line—dragged myself into the shower at dawn, scrubbed off salt and sand, blew my hair smooth instead of the mean field ponytail.
I’d left it half-down, the top twisted back with a clip so it looked like I’d tried.
Mascara, a swipe of gloss, clean shirt. Presentable, at least. Better than the feral beach version he’d met.
His mouth edged toward a smile and didn’t quite get there. It still felt like something moved. “The beach cop is off duty.”
“Not a cop,” I said. “Just bossy.”
He took that in—the way men who don’t waste words take things in—and tipped his chin toward my bag. “Now?”
“Trying to warn people.” I adjusted the strap, because my hands needed a job that wasn’t climbing him. “Rain’s supposed to start later today. We’ll get a few days of it, if the models are right. King tides on top. Streets will flood. I’m working on making sure it’s cars and not people.”
“Are you in charge of everything?” he asked, deadpan. “Beaches and rain?”
God, help me, I laughed. It felt like a release valve hissing. “Only the parts that don’t listen,” I said. “I’m a planner. Urban and coastal. My partner and I run a firm a few blocks from here.”
His eyes did that steady inventory again, lingering on my face like he was memorizing, not judging. “Uh hm.”
“We do flood mapping, risk plans, drainage, policy recommendations. Sometimes dunes. Sometimes buyouts. Sometimes telling very wealthy people that their house is a bad idea.”
“Sounds like you’re popular,” he said, straight-faced.
“With the people who can’t afford to lose,” I said. “Less with the ones who think the ocean’s a pet.”
He grunted—agreement or approval, I couldn’t tell. Close up, he radiated a kind of quiet that wasn’t emptiness—it was contained force, the way a dam holds a river back. He didn’t crowd me, but he took up space. The air registered him like weather.
“Ethan,” he said then, as if he’d remembered manners were a thing you could use.
It landed like a weight where it mattered. I held out my hand. “Natalie,” I said.
His palm closed around mine and the jolt of it felt indecent for Sunday on a sidewalk. Warm. Firm. No squeeze to prove anything. Just contact, and the kind of strength that announces itself by not needing to announce itself. My pulse did a stupid skip.
He didn’t let go right away, and I didn’t ask him to. It wasn’t a handshake anymore. It was a press, held a heartbeat past polite. The kind that made my body remember it hadn’t been touched right.
A shout cut across the sidewalk. “Natalie! You angel!”
I turned. Mrs. Fancher from the candle shop on North Market hustled toward us in her orthopedic sandals, apron smeared with wax like she’d wrestled a honeycomb.
She grabbed my forearms and kissed the air by my cheek, then thumped my bicep like I was a prize pig at the fair.
“Your email was a godsend. I told my son-in-law to move the Subaru, and we cleared the grate. If we don’t flood tomorrow, I’ll light a hundred tea lights in your honor. ”
“Save your wicks,” I said, laughing. “Just text me a picture so I can guilt your neighbors.”
She beamed, then glanced at Ethan, taking in the height, the shoulders, the quiet like it was a living thing. “Well, hello there.” Her eyes came back to me with the speed of gossip. “Is this—?”
“Someone who doesn’t know better than to walk into me on the sidewalk,” I said, and felt heat lick my throat when Ethan’s mouth did that not-smile again.
Mrs. Fancher clucked delightedly. “You tell your granddaddy I saw him on East Bay yesterday holding court like he still owns the place. Handsome devil.” She wagged a finger. “And tell him he should be proud of you.”
“I’ll pass it along,” I said, softening despite myself.
She squeezed my wrist. “Don’t work too hard, hun.” To Ethan, conspiratorially: “She will if you let her.” Then she swept away in a waft of beeswax and lavender, already calling to someone down the block.
Ethan watched her go, then returned to me. “Granddaddy?” he asked, neutral, curious.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s … Butch Kennedy. Mayor Butch Kennedy. He used to be the mayor. People still treat him like he is.”
“New here,” he said. “I don’t know the names yet.”
“Then you’re pure,” I said, smiling. “Don’t let Charleston ruin you with its stories too fast.”
He didn’t push. It made me want to give him everything he didn’t ask for.
We fell into step without deciding to, heading south where the oaks opened into a slice of sun.
The market sheds buzzed behind us as a carriage clattered somewhere close.
I pointed with my chin at a curb that always lied.
“That pond right there? Looks three inches, hides a storm drain burp. People stall out all the time.”
“How deep?” he asked.
“Depends on the tide. Today? You’d ruin your shoes. Monday night?” I squinted at the mental map, felt the math click. “Don’t test it.”
“Got it,” he said, and there it was again—those words landing somewhere low and hot, a switch flipped I didn’t know I had. I swallowed, tried to convert the feeling into civic-mindedness before it ate me.
“You’re … new-in-town new?” I asked. “Or just passing through?”
“New enough that I still use a map and piss off beach cops,” he said, that almost-smile nicking at one corner again. “Came in yesterday.”
“For work?”
“Eventually,” he said. “I’ve got … meetings.” The pause wasn't loaded with lies. It was loaded with things he wasn’t sharing yet. It didn’t feel like a game.
“Mm,” I said, because I understood holding cards close. “You ride a lot?”
“When I can,” he said. “He—Flapjack—likes to move. So do I.”
“Where is he now?” I knew I shouldn’t picture him at a barn, sleeves shoved up, hand on that horse’s neck, body a wall the animal leaned into like faith. I did. I pictured it in IMAX.
“Stabled,” he said. “He’s fine.” It came out the way a man says the house is locked, the stove is off, I checked twice. Assurance, for both of us.
We passed a family in matching sunhats. A little girl stared up at Ethan like he’d walked out of a storybook that involved swords. He tipped his head to her, solemn. She squealed and hid behind her mother’s leg, then peeked out and giggled, ecstatic that giants were polite.
“Do you miss it?” I asked without meaning to. “Where you’re from.”
He thought about it like it deserved thought.
“The quiet,” he said at last. “The way you can hear a creek before you see it. The sky without edges. But this—” He lifted his chin at the riot of Charleston, the colors and voices and old bones dressed up pretty.
“This has a different kind of quiet if you look under it. It’s loud, but it’s … held.”
Held. The word hit something inside me. The way he noticed felt like fingers along my spine.
“Anyway,” he said, easing the weight off the moment with a practiced gentleness that made me wonder how many times he’d done that for other people. “You were out here patrolling. Don’t let me keep you from it.”
“You’re not keeping me,” I said, then heard myself and added, “You can walk with me. If you want. Since you’ve already proven you’re not a tripping hazard.”