25. Baleigh
BALEIGH
The sun hangs low, a velvet plum against the horizon, bleeding gold onto the salt-crusted hulls of the fishing boats.
We stroll the length of the pier, our shoulders brushing as the scent of roasting garlic and brine drifts from the village trattorias.
Usually, Atticus moves with a restless, prowling energy, his thumb ghosting over his camera shutter, but tonight his hands stay shoved deep in his pockets.
The air turns cool, smelling of deep water and old stone. A small boat moors nearby, the fisherman shouting a rhythmic greeting to a woman on a balcony above.
"The light is perfect," I say, nodding toward the water where the Mediterranean swallows the sun. "Aren't you going to take the shot?"
He looks at the sea, then back at me, his eyes dark and unreadable.
"Sometimes a photo feels like I’m just trying to own a moment before it leaves. I’d rather just let this one stay."
We find a spot on the seawall, the stone still radiating a ghost of the afternoon’s heat through my dress. There’s a gravity in his voice I haven’t heard before. The playful travel journalist is gone, replaced by a man who looks suddenly weary of his own wanderlust.
"My mother sent me a list once," he says, staring at his boots. "She highlighted every wedding, every funeral, and every milestone I missed in the first three years. I think she wanted to shame me into coming home. Instead, it just made the ocean look wider."
He picks up a loose pebble and tosses it into the surf.
"A few months turned into a year. By the second year, the phone calls got shorter. By the third, the guilt of being gone so long became an anchor. It was easier to just be 'the son in Italy' than to fly back and explain why I didn't want the life they had waiting for me."
"Is that why you never went back?" I ask, my voice barely a whisper. "The guilt?"
"The fear of being found out," he corrects. "Fear that if I stepped back into my role at home, the person I've built here would evaporate. I told myself I was free, but really, I was just running until I didn't recognize the person at the starting line anymore."
I watch the set of his jaw, the way his muscles tense under the linen of his shirt.
He speaks of it as an epic journey, a curated collection of train tickets and sunsets, but the cadence of his voice tells a different story.
It’s a rhythmic, restless beat—the sound of one who knows exactly where the exits are in every room.
"You mentioned that assignment in Morocco," I say, tracing the rough edge of a stone. "The one you took right after things got 'messy' with that gallery owner in Milan. And then the month in Greece after your father tried to call that truce."
He shifts, his gaze fixed on a distant freighter. "The work doesn't wait, Baleigh. You go where the story is."
"But the stories always seem to arrive right when the people do," I counter.
I consider the way he’s looked at me this past week—the heat in his eyes that he quickly masks with a joke or a camera lens.
I've spent my whole life staying put because I was scared of the unknown, but looking at Atticus, I see the opposite side of the same coin. He stays moving because he’s afraid of being known.
"Is it really freedom if you're always checking the schedule for the next train?" I ask. My heart thumps against my ribs, but I don't look away. "Moving isn't the same thing as being free. It looks a lot more like you’re just making sure no one can ever pin you down long enough to see the cracks."
He lets out a sharp, dry breath that isn't quite a laugh. "I like my life, Baleigh. I've built something here."
"You've built a beautiful suit of armor," I say. "But adventure makes for a very lonely shield. You aren't chasing the world, Atticus. You're using it to hide."
The silence is heavy, punctured only by the rhythmic slap of waves against the pier.
The easy, effortless mask he wears doesn’t just slip; it shatters.
He doesn't reach for his camera. He doesn't offer a charming anecdote about a rainy night in Paris. He just sits there, exposed in the dying light, looking at me like I’ve stripped him of every defense he’s spent a decade perfecting.
Finally, he doesn't have an exit strategy.
Atticus closes his eyes. The wind tugs at his dark hair, but he doesn't brush it back. He looks smaller than he did an hour ago, less like the intrepid traveler on a glossy masthead and more like a man standing on a ledge.
"I spent ten years convincing myself that staying in one place was a slow death," he says. His voice is a low rasp, stripped of its usual melodic confidence. "I told everyone—and myself—that I was choosing the world. But you’re right. If I’m always at thirty thousand feet, no one can see when my hands start shaking. If I never unpack, I never have to worry about what happens when the lease runs out and I’m still not enough. "
He turns his head, finally looking at me. The bravado is gone. His eyes are bloodshot and raw.
"I’m terrified of being a disappointment," he admits. "Back home, I’m the success story who escaped. If I stop, if I let someone in and it doesn't work, then I’m just a guy who’s been running in circles for a decade because he was too scared to be ordinary.
Dependency feels like a trap. I thought if I needed no one, I’d never be the reason someone else’s heart broke. "
I reach out, my fingers grazing the rough stubble on his jaw. He doesn't pull away. Instead, he leans into my palm, a long, shuddering exhale escaping his lungs.
"I’ve spent years being ordinary for everyone else," I whisper.
"I chose the safe street, the practical car, the men who wouldn't make me lose my breath because that felt like control. But arriving here, seeing how you live—how Max and Amos think—it made me realize that safety is just a different kind of hiding. We’re both just guarding different sized cages. "
Atticus takes my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. His grip is tight, almost desperate.
"I look at you," he says, "and the thought of a train schedule makes me sick. I do not want to be in the next city. I just want to be wherever you’re standing. And that scares the hell out of me, Baleigh. Because I don’t know how to stay."
"We could figure it out," I say, the honesty of it vibrating in the air. "Neither of us has to go back to the way things were."
The coastline dissolves into a jagged silhouette against a velvet sky, and one by one, the lights of the harbor prick the darkness like fallen stars. The village below glows with a warm, amber hum, but up here on the seawall, the world feels reduced to the narrow space between us.
Atticus doesn't look at the horizon. He doesn't glance at his watch or check the light for one last frame.
His eyes stay anchored to mine, heavy and unblinking.
The restless energy that usually defines him—that "keep moving, keep talking" vibration—has finally gone silent.
He isn't calculating the distance to the next port or framing a story in his head. He is simply, terrifyingly present.
"You're looking at me like you've never seen me before," I say. My voice feels thin in the salt air, but I don't look away.
"I haven't," he says. He reaches out, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw with a slow, deliberate pressure that sends a jolt through my chest. "I’ve been looking at the version of you I thought I could walk away from when the program ended.
The girl on vacation. I didn't plan for the girl who could see right through the walls. "
The air around us thickens, charged with a sudden, sharp clarity. It’s no longer about the romantic backdrop of a Mediterranean sunset or the thrill of a summer fling. It’s the weight of two people standing on the precipice of a great height, realizing they’ve already stopped falling.
He leans in, his forehead resting against mine.
I detect the heat of him, the steady, rapid thrum of his pulse beneath the skin of his wrist. He isn't pulling back to maintain a comfortable distance.
He isn't shielding himself with a camera or a clever observation. He’s leaning into the uncertainty, choosing the friction of a real connection over the safety of his solitude.
"Baleigh," he whispers, her name sounding like a confession.
I reach up, my hands sliding into the thick hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer.
There is no more room for metaphors or exits.
The attraction that’s been simmering under every shared espresso and every winding street excursion boils over, stripped of all its pretenses.
I see him now—the man beneath the traveler—and he sees the woman who finally decided to stop playing it safe.
We aren't running anymore. We’re right here.