Chapter 13
Kassidy
Tucker Brennan is standing in my doorway holding Thai food.
My brain performs a hard reboot. One moment I'm alone on my couch in mismatched socks and an oversized cardigan, surrounded by a nest of notebooks and empty coffee cups, deep in a chapter where Sophie finally tells Ethan she loves him.
The next moment, the buzzer goes off, and the voice on the other end is the voice I've been hearing in my sleep for two weeks, and now he's here. In my hallway. With spring rolls.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi."
"I brought dinner."
"I see that."
He stands there—tall, steady, wearing a leather jacket over a T-shirt that I recognize from the inn, the one that fits him in ways that should be regulated.
His hair is slightly longer than it was two weeks ago.
His jaw is darker with stubble. He looks like he hasn't been sleeping well, and the fact that I can tell—that I've memorized his rested face well enough to identify its absence—sends a jolt of guilt through me.
"Can I come in?"
I step back. He enters, and my small apartment shrinks by half. He fills the space the way he fills every space—not with noise or aggression but with presence. The quiet authority of a man who's been trained to occupy a room and make it safer.
He sets the food on my kitchen counter and looks around.
I see the apartment through his eyes: neat, organized, every surface arranged with intent.
Bookshelves categorized by genre. A writing desk by the window with a notebook centered precisely.
A corkboard above it covered in index cards—my outline, color-coded, the architecture of my novel visible in pink and blue and yellow rectangles.
"You color-code your outlines," he says.
"Pink for emotional beats. Blue for plot points. Yellow for dialogue I need to write."
"That's the most Kassidy Monroe thing I've ever heard."
"Tucker—"
"I know. We need to talk." He turns to face me, and his expression is the one I remember from the beach—open, direct, refusing to look away. "But first, can we eat? I drove two and a half hours and I'm running on Calder's terrible office coffee."
We eat at my tiny kitchen table. The Thai food is good—better than good, takeout selected with care because he paid attention to what I like.
He remembered. During one of our late-night conversations at the inn, I mentioned that green curry was my comfort food.
He remembered, and he drove two and a half hours to bring it to me.
The realization sits in my chest like a stone.
"How's the book?" he asks, chopsticks in hand, as if this is a normal dinner and not the most emotionally loaded meal of my life.
"Almost done. Diana's been emailing me feedback. She says it's the best thing I've written."
"It is."
"You only read twelve chapters."
"They were enough."
"The dedication—" I start, and my voice catches. "You saw the dedication."
"I saw it."
"T.B. For Tucker Brennan. Because you—" I put down my chopsticks.
The pretense of normalcy crumbles like wet paper.
"Because you walked into my life during the worst creative drought I've ever had and made me believe I could write again.
And I dedicated my book to you and then spent two weeks pretending you were a pen pal. "
"Why?"
The word is simple. Not accusatory—curious. Like he's asking about the weather.
"Because I'm terrified."
"Of what?"
"Of needing you." The truth comes out raw, unedited, the way the best sentences always do—before the internal critic can touch them.
"Ryan didn't just leave me. He rewired me.
He made me believe that the things I am—organized, intense, invested—are flaws.
That the way I love is too much. That wanting someone is the same as losing yourself. "
"It's not."
"I know it's not. But knowing and feeling—"
"Are different things. You told me that."
"I did."
Tucker puts his chopsticks down, pushes the food aside, and rests his forearms on the table. His hands are inches from mine—close enough to touch, not touching. Waiting.
"Kassidy, I didn't come here to pressure you. I came because I couldn't stand another day of polite texts while pretending the last two weeks didn't happen."
"They happened."
"They happened. The hurricane happened. The library happened.
The inn happened. And the morning after, when you pulled away—that happened too.
And I let it, because you asked me to, and I respect you enough to honor what you ask for.
But Kassidy—" His voice drops, and the intensity in it raises the hair on my arms. "You think you're too much?
You're not enough for me—you're everything. "
The sentence explodes in my chest. Not like a bomb—like a sunrise. Slow and total and impossible to look away from.
"Everything," I repeat.
"The color-coded outlines. The Scrabble trash talk. The way you argue with characters who don't exist. The way you cry at Ishiguro and laugh at Talia Hibbert and make lists when you're scared. All of it. Every single thing Ryan told you was too much is exactly the thing I—"
He stops. Takes a breath. This is hard for him too, I realize.
The man who speaks in tactical brevity, who communicates in nods and copy thats and carefully measured sentences.
This is Tucker Brennan without the armor, and the vulnerability of it breaks something open in me that I've been holding shut with both hands.
"I fell for the woman who mutters dialogue on beaches and plays cutthroat Scrabble," he says. "Not some edited, careful version of her. The real one. The one who makes lists in the bathroom and steals the covers and dedicated a book to me before she could even admit she wanted to see me again."
A tear tracks down my cheek. Then another. Not the ugly, cathartic tears from the gas station—something quieter. The tears of a person who's been holding a door shut against a flood and has just realized the water on the other side isn't a threat. It's a life.
"I steal the covers?"
"Aggressively."
"You snore."
"I do not."
"You absolutely do. A soft, rumbling snore that sounds like a large cat. I almost recorded it as evidence."
He laughs. The sound breaks the last of the tension—not gradually but all at once, like a rubber band snapping.
We're laughing together in my tiny kitchen over Thai food, and the absurdity of it—the two-week standoff, the polite texts, the elaborate emotional avoidance—collapses under the weight of how ridiculous we've both been.
"Tucker." I reach across the table and take his hands.
His fingers close around mine immediately, instinctively, as if they've been waiting for exactly this.
"I'm sorry. For running. For hiding behind texts.
For being so scared of getting hurt again that I almost missed the best thing that's walked into my life. "
"Almost?"
"You're here. With spring rolls. I'd say the window's still open."
He stands, rounds the table, and pulls me to my feet. The kitchen is barely wide enough for both of us, and the proximity is instant—his chest against mine, his hands settling on my waist, his forehead dropping to touch mine.
"No more running?" he asks.
"No more running."
"No more outlines for your feelings?"
"I make no promises about the outlines."
He kisses me, and it's different from the library, different from the inn.
This kiss is unhurried and certain. The kiss of two people who've made it through the storm—both the literal one and the one they built themselves—and are standing on the other side, battered and brave and choosing each other anyway.
When he pulls back, his thumb traces my cheekbone, catching a tear I didn't know was there.
"So what happens now?" I ask.
"Now we do this the right way. Dates. Phone calls that aren't polite. Weekends. The whole thing."
"You live in Beaufort. I live in Charleston."
"Three hours, two if I haul ass. I've commuted farther for worse."
"I'm going to be neurotic about this. You know that, right? I'm going to overanalyze everything and make contingency plans for our contingency plans."
"I'm counting on it."
"And I'm going to write about you. In the books. You're going to be a character in everything I write from now on, because my brain has absorbed you and there's no undo button."
"I'm honored."
"You're going to be fictionalized."
"As long as you keep my Scrabble skills accurate."
The laughter comes again—easy, warm, the sound of two people falling into step with each other. His arms wrap around me, and I lean into his chest, and my apartment—the one that felt like a waiting room for two weeks—shrinks to the size of this.
My phone buzzes on the counter. Tara.
Tara: How's the hermit life?
I type back with one hand, the other still fisted in Tucker's shirt:
Me: Hermit life is over. He's here.
Tara: THE SECURITY GUY??
Me: The security guy.
Tara: I KNEW IT. I told you to stop overthinking.
Me: For once.
Tara: For once?? I'm always right. Go kiss him. Stop texting me.
Tucker reads over my shoulder. "I like Tara."
"Everyone likes Tara. She's insufferable."
He presses his mouth to my temple. Just that—lips against skin, unhurried, like we have all the time we wasted and then some. My eyes sting.
Seven books. I've written seven books about this exact feeling, and not once did I get it right. Not once did I capture how small it is. How ordinary. How it's just a man pressing his mouth to your hair and meaning it.