13. Charlotte Gallagher
Charlotte Gallagher
The fire has burned down to embers by the time we finish eating, casting just enough light to see by. The ocean fills the quiet the way it always does. I barely notice it anymore. It’s as constant as breathing.
So is this. I’m curled into Dane’s side, his arm resting around my shoulders, my legs stretched toward the fading heat.
It snuck up on me—the ease of being with him.
A few months ago, I would’ve been hyperaware of everything between us. Every place his body touched mine. Every shift, every breath. Back then, everything felt charged.
Now I lean into him without thinking, and he adjusts automatically, pulling me closer without even looking.
It’s routine now.
And somehow that unsettles me more than the strain between us ever did. Tension can be named, pushed back, controlled. This is quieter. It’s woven itself so completely into my days that I can’t tell where he ends and the rest of my life begins.
“You’re staring at me.”
He smiles. “I am.”
“Why?”
His gaze doesn’t move. “Because you’re beautiful, and I enjoy looking at you.”
I tilt my head back and look at him. “You’re not so bad looking yourself.”
He laughs. “I know.”
“Conceited much?”
He leans down and presses a brief kiss to the top of my head. “You’re the one who said I wasn’t bad looking.”
“True.”
Dane is all hard edges and shadows. Black hair and eyes, broad shoulders built by years of hauling nets, climbing cliffs, carrying too much for too long. The island built him into something hard and solid, all muscle and control.
Sometimes I stare at him and can’t believe someone can actually look like him.
“You could’ve been a model.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious. You could have.”
“No thanks.” He laughs quietly, shaking his head like the idea’s absurd. “What would you do? I mean, if we got off this island?”
I don’t even have to think about it. “I’d write stories.”
He glances down at me. “Yeah? What would your stories be about?”
“People falling in love.” I pause, searching for the right words. “What it makes them do. How it changes everything.”
“I can see you doing that.”
“I think I’d want to live somewhere small and quiet. The kind of place where everyone knows each other, and life moves slower. Not like Brisbane.”
Dane nods. “After all these years out here, I think a big city would drive me insane.”
I smile a little. “Yeah. I think all the noise would get to me. I’m too used to hearing waves and wind and birds instead of people all the time.”
“What else would you do?”
“Maybe travel. Get a cat. Eat really good food.” I shrug. “Simple things.”
“Sounds like you’ve thought about it.”
I drag my finger through the sand beside me, absentmindedly tracing a D + C inside a crooked heart. “Sometimes thinking is all there is to do.”
He leans over and bumps his shoulder against mine. “You don’t see me anywhere in that?”
I turn toward him. It’s harder to read him now with the light fading, but I know that look. He’s holding something back.
“We don’t know what life would look like out there for either of us.”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t sound like you’ve imagined me in it at all.”
He’s right. And there’s a reason for that.
“You’re choosing me now because I’m the only option you have.” The words hurt coming out, but I don’t take them back. Because some part of me believes them.
“No, Charlotte.”
“Yes, Dane. Out there, you’d have choices. Other people. Prettier girls.” I look away toward the water for a second before forcing myself to keep going. “And I don’t know who you’d become with all of that in front of you. I don’t know if this”—I gesture between us—“would stay the same.”
The truth has been sitting inside me for a long time. I just never said it out loud until now.
“Don’t say that again.” The quiet force in his voice catches me off guard.
“It’s true though.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Dane, out there you’d actually have a choice. Real choices.”
“I do have a choice.” That stops me.
“Look at me, Charlotte Gallagher.” He shifts closer until we’re face to face. His hands come up to my cheeks, holding me there. “I have a choice, and I make it every day.”
My breath catches.
“I choose you. There isn’t anyone else I want. There never will be.”
I go still, his words moving through me slowly, loosening something deep in my chest.
“I choose you too.”
“Then marry me,” he says.
A laugh slips out before I can stop it.
I look at him, and his expression never changes.
“You’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
I open my mouth, then close it again, trying to catch up to the conversation somehow. “Dane… who’s going to marry us?”
“We will.”
I shake my head a little. “That’s not how it works.”
“Maybe not out there.” His gaze stays locked on mine. “But we decide what things mean here.”
He says it so simply, like the answer should be obvious. And something in me shifts because I understand exactly what he means. I’ve said the same thing before, whenever I wanted something badly enough to stop caring whether it made sense to anyone else.
“We’ve always decided things for ourselves out here. Every rule. Every choice. No one handed any of it to us.” His eyes stay locked on mine. “I want you to know I mean this.”
My chest tightens because I know he’s speaking from his heart.
“I want something that marks it.” I wait, my heart starting to beat harder. “I’ll make you a ring.”
And somehow that gets to me even more than the marriage proposal itself. Maybe because it feels real in a different way. Something he’ll make with his own hands. Something I’ll wear every day. Something constant.
His thumb brushes slowly across my cheek. “I want you to be my wife.”
I look at him—really look at him. The face I know better than my own. The man who’s been the hardest part of my life and somehow the most certain thing in it too.
This is what it means to love someone enough to keep choosing them over and over again.
I thought it was something I wanted someday.
I didn’t realize I was already living it.
“But it wouldn’t mean anything in the real world. Not legally. Not officially. Whatever we do here, out there it wouldn’t matter.”
“Then I’ll marry you again out there.” He says it without hesitation.
“Wherever you want. However it has to happen. We’ll do it again.” His eyes stay on mine. “It matters to me. That’s enough.”
I study him for a long moment.
He doesn’t push. Doesn’t rush me. He just waits, like he always does when something really matters.
A smile pulls at my mouth. “Yes. I’ll marry you.”
Something shifts in his expression then. Not excitement exactly. Something quieter. Relief, maybe.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “At sunset.”
I nod. “Tomorrow at sunset.”
He brushes a strand of hair back from my face, so gently I feel it everywhere. Then I lean back against him, settling into his chest as his arm wraps around me.
The night carries on around us unchanged. Waves. Wind. The steady sound of the island breathing around us.
But something between us shifts again anyway.