Chapter 5
Cove
The car was already waiting at the curb when I stepped outside my apartment building, with an unfamiliar man standing beside the rear door.
Waiting.
For me.
“Mr. Sinclair?” the man asked as I approached, his gaze hidden behind black sunglasses. He looked to be in his late twenties to mid-thirties, but then again, I was pretty awful at guessing ages.
“Uh, yes, that’s me. But I really just go by Cove,” I answered, unable to see through the car windows from how tinted they were.
Honestly, I’d just sort of assumed this was Tobias’s car since this neighborhood tended to lean more toward reasonably priced sedans or pickup trucks, and whatever kind of car this was, it looked like it cost more than I would go for on the black market. “Who are you…?”
“My name is Ben. I’m Mr. Kelly’s personal assistant.”
“Do personal assistants usually drive their bosses around?”
A genuine question.
Ben huffed out a laugh, the sunlight catching in his blonde hair, and the corner of his lip tilting up. “No, they usually do not. But it’s what I end up doing whenever Mr. Kelly doesn’t want to drive. Today, he said he wanted to be able to talk to you without any distractions during the ride.”
“Oh, okay.”
I wish I could make other people do things for me that I didn’t feel like doing.
Ben opened the back door, and with an incline of his head, ushered me in. I climbed in, automatically ready to pull the door shut myself, but nope, Ben had already closed it behind me.
“Hello, Cove.”
I startled, remembering that there was another person back here with me.
I turned from the door to face him, my eyes going big at how fucking fancy the interior was.
There were just two seats, but they looked more like first-class airline seats than car seats.
The carpet looked plush beneath my feet, and each of our seats had a tablet mounted to the wall in front of us.
And yes, I say “wall” because that’s literally what it was. I couldn’t see or even hear Ben.
“Do you like this car?” Tobias was watching me with an unreadable gaze.
“I mean… yeah,” I admitted. “It’s really nice.”
That felt like the safest possible answer.
“It’s comfortable,” he stated.
“I can see that,” I replied, settling further into my seat and becoming aware of how soft the upholstery was. “It’s kind of like sitting in a spaceship.”
His lips twitched almost imperceptibly. “I’m glad it’s acceptable.”
After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, during which I pretended to look around some more, I commented, “I didn’t know you had a personal assistant.”
“Why would you know that?”
I struggled with a response until he lightly chuckled, making me realize he had a very weird sense of humor.
“Would you like a drink or snack?”
“Sure..?”
His lips twitched up again, and he reached over to a built-in mini fridge I’d missed. “Still or sparkling?”
“Uh… still, I think,” I stuttered. “That’s like… regular water, right?”
A short laugh left his mouth, and I flushed.
“Yes, I suppose it would be,” he answered before handing me a small glass bottle of cold water. Then he reached for a different compartment, opening it to reveal a cupboard of snacks.
I looked over the array with my brows raised. “Do you just keep the car stocked all the time?”
“No. The water is typically brought in by Ben before a drive.” He hesitated for a moment, then said, “I wanted to make sure you weren’t hungry on the way.”
He… he bought all of those snacks just for me?
Well, maybe he wanted to show that he’d be an accommodating boss.
“Thank you. I guess I’ll take the seaweed crisps then.”
“I thought you might like those.”
What? Did I have a particularly seaweed-y vibe going on or something?
As I took a sip of the water, he studied me, and I swore he was tracking the bob of my Adam’s apple.
I reminded myself of Emma’s words to me when I’d first become aware of Tobias. “He’s eccentric,” and “they’re all like that.”
I popped a piece of seaweed in my mouth, closing my eyes briefly in appreciation of the salty flavor.
“Have you told anyone where you’re going today?”
I almost choked. “Um. No? Should I have?”
“No,” he said. “I was simply curious.”
Riiiiiight…
“I mean,” I added quickly, just in case he was a serial killer. “I told my neighbor I was going out this afternoon. Just not… where.”
“That’s reasonable,” he replied, sounding satisfied.
“So,” I said after a second, trying to settle the nervous energy that kept making my fingers twitch against my knee, “how long have you had your private set-up?”
“Hm, I’d say a little over a decade. It’s certainly grown since the beginning, though.”
“Wow. How many systems do you have now?”
“Several primary tanks,” he answered. “And a number of supporting environments.”
“What kind of filtration are you running?” I asked.
“Custom.”
I leaned forward, my excitement chipping away at my nerves.
“Custom like—you had it built? Or custom like modified commercial systems?”
“Yes.”
I stared at him. “That’s not an answer.”
“It will make more sense when you see it.”
That was extremely unhelpful, but… also extremely effective, because now I really wanted to see it.
“How far out are we going?” I asked, cringing at myself for not asking that at the start.
“Not too far,” he answered. “Just outside the city.”
It was quiet for a few minutes before a question that’d been on my mind slipped past my lips.
“Why me?”
He looked over at me, his head cocked and brow creased.
“For the job,” I clarified quickly. “I just mean—you could hire someone way more qualified than me.” It sounded worse out loud than it had in my head.
“I’m still early in my career,” I continued, trying to explain myself properly.
“There are people with PhDs who do private consulting for systems like that. Or people who’ve been managing institutional tanks for years.
I just—” My shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t really get why you’d pick me. ”
He seemed to be thinking for a while, like he wasn’t quite sure how to verbalize his response.
“I find it difficult to let people into my home,” he said, making my heart kick behind my ribs at the sliver of vulnerability in those words. “I don’t employ staff there unless I consider it necessary, and when I do, I prefer them to be… compatible.”
“And you… think I would be? Compatible?”
“Yes.”
“Because I work at the aquarium?” I asked.
“No. Because of how you behave in it.”
“What?”
“You pay attention differently than most people,” he said, looking at me like he saw something no one else could. “You don’t rush past the animals. You don’t treat them as exhibits.”
My breath caught in my throat as a strange surge of emotion welled up inside me.
Why did I suddenly want to cry?
“You adjust your movements around them. You speak to them even when you don’t realize you’re doing it.” His deep brown eyes intently observed me from under his glasses. “And sometimes,” he added quietly, almost… melancholic, “it looks like you get lost in the water.”
“W-what?”
“I’m not sure how to accurately explain it. " He tapped his fingers against the armrest of his seat, then looked out the window.
The car began to slow, offering us a reprieve from the conversation.
“We’re at the gate.”
I ventured a glance out of the window as well and found a tall, metal gate slowly creeping open to allow the car through.
“Do you get any trespassers out here?”
Tobias’s lips pinched. “Not too many.”
I tried to ignore the implications of that and continued to look out from the car as we left the gate behind and followed a long, winding drive that curved along the edge of a cliff, as if it had been carved directly into the rock.
My jaw dropped in awe as dark blue water stretched out endlessly beyond the edge of the property, waves crashing against jagged rock far below us in bursts of white spray that caught the afternoon light like shattered glass.
Then I saw the house, made of glass and stone, rising out of the cliffside in layered terraces that followed the natural shape of the coastline, as if the whole structure had been designed around the ocean rather than just built near it.
It was made to complement it.
His neighbors were the wind and sea, with not a single other house in sight.
When the car rolled to a smooth stop near the front entrance, tires settling quietly against the pale stone of the drive, I just sat there for a moment with my hand still wrapped around the bottle of water Tobias had given me earlier, staring out the window as though the house might shift into something more ordinary if I looked at it long enough.
It didn’t.
The door beside me opened.
Ben stood there again, silent and efficient, the wind tugging lightly at his jacket as he stepped back to give me space to exit.
I climbed out slowly, and the first thing that hit me was the air.
The breeze caught my hair, pushing back the copper strands from my face, and when I inhaled, I could actually taste the ocean on the back of my tongue.
I hadn’t realized how long it had been since I’d stood somewhere like this.
Somewhere open.
Somewhere uninterrupted.
I turned slowly in a quiet circle, trying to take in the scale of everything at once—the sweep of the water below, the endless horizon beyond it, the sheer drop of the cliffs, and the silence that wasn’t silence at all but wind and waves and solitude.
“You’re very far from everything out here,” I said, not quite meaning it as a question.
“Yes, I am,” Tobias answered simply. “I handpicked the land. Do you like it?”
“It’s incredible,” I murmured.
Tobias stepped out of the car to join me, the movement relaxed and unhurried, as though there were nowhere else he needed to be and nothing else competing for his attention.