29. Vivienne
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Vivienne
The cottage is shaking like the whole structure is being tested by the full force of the Pacific and the ocean has decided it wants to personally tear it apart, board by board.
I’m sitting on the couch with my knees pulled up to my chest, arms wrapped around my shins with a blanket draped over my shoulders even though it’s not really cold.
The windows are rattling in their frames so violently I keep expecting the glass to shatter.
The sound is nerve-shredding. It sounds like someone’s outside with a jackhammer working on every pane at once, trying to break through.
Rain is hitting the roof relentlessly, and it’s deafening. It’s so loud and constant, it feels like the storm is trying to flatten the cottage into the sand and erase it completely from existence.
The power went out twenty minutes ago.
One second I was staring at the lamp across the room, and the next I was sitting in complete darkness while the cottage groaned and shook around me.
I have two candles lit on the coffee table now — the emergency ones Margo left in the kitchen drawer — and they’re flickering every time the wind finds a new gap in the walls to push through.
Their flames dance sideways, throwing shadows that jump and twist across the walls, making everything feel unstable and so scary.
I should have left.
I know I should have left. Margo knocked on my door this morning and told me the storm was tracking worse than expected.
It had intensified overnight, and the coastal flood warnings were being upgraded to evacuations.
She offered to let me stay at her place in town where the buildings are newer and sturdier and not literally built on sand.
But I told her I’d be fine.
I lied.
The truth is, I haven’t been fine in three days, and I didn’t want to be around people while I wasn’t fine. I didn’t want to make small talk and pretend or explain why I looked like I hadn’t slept.
I’ve been sitting in this cottage for three days trying to figure out what comes next.
Telling Callum about Stellan felt like a giant boulder lifting off my chest. I’d been carrying this heavy secret for so long I’d forgotten what it felt like to stand up straight and to breathe without that constant pressure crushing down on my ribs.
The second I said it all out loud — Stellan, the harassment, the stolen dish, the public humiliation, why I disappeared — the burden just … dropped.
It fell away and I could breathe again. Full breaths that filled my lungs completely.
Callum knows now. He knows everything.
And he didn’t look at me like I was broken.
He didn’t look at me with pity or like I was something fragile that needed careful handling.
He looked at me like he wanted to kill Stellan Voss with his bare hands.
But also with something that felt like overflowing love — tender and fierce at the same time.
He told me I was brave. I was strong. He was in awe of me for surviving it, even though he wished I hadn’t had to carry it alone.
But then I left. I walked out of his apartment at two in the morning because I needed space to process what it meant that he knew. That someone finally knew, and I didn’t have to be alone with it anymore.
And I’ve been processing for three days.
I’ve been thinking about New York and the version of myself who walked into Stellan Voss’s kitchen thinking she was ready for anything. Armored in her Le Cordon Bleu distinction and her award and her certainty that talent and hard work would be enough. More than enough.
And the version who walked out six months later so broken she couldn’t even hold a pan without her hands shaking.
I’ve been thinking about the five years I spent running.
Moving from city to city, Portland to Austin to Cleveland to Boston, consulting for restaurants I’d never stay at long enough to care about, keeping everyone at arm’s length because letting someone in meant they might ask questions I couldn’t answer.
And I’ve been thinking about Callum.
And Paris. And the night of our graduation when we finally stopped pretending we were just friends and classmates and rivals. Waking up in his apartment with the sun coming through the windows and his arm around my waist and thinking, This is what I want. This is what forever should feel like.
About the floor plan he texted me five years ago. The good vibes corner. The small star he drew beside the window table.
And how he built exactly that.
I’ve been thinking about how I deleted his contact and blocked his number and disappeared because I loved him too much to let him destroy himself trying to save me. How I chose to lose him rather than let him lose everything.
And now I’m here. In Westerly Point. In this cottage that feels more like home than anywhere I’ve lived in years.
In this town where people know my coffee order and wave when they see me on the street and show up to fill every seat at a collaborative dinner like it’s their restaurant too.
Like Callum’s success is something they all have a stake in.
And I love him.
I still love him.
I never stopped.
The realization isn’t new. I think I’ve known it since the moment I walked into Neap & Spring and saw him standing in that kitchen, exhausted and angry and so heartbreakingly familiar.
Maybe even before that. Maybe I never stopped knowing it.
I just got very, very good at not letting myself feel it.
But sitting here in the dark with the storm trying to tear this cottage apart, I’m finally letting myself feel it.
I love Callum Reid.
I love the way he cooks like it’s a conversation with the ingredients, listening to what they need like he does with everyone around him.
The way his hands move through prep work with a precision that’s almost meditative and so beautiful to watch.
I love the way he talks about his family with exasperation and affection in equal measure, like they drive him absolutely crazy and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
I love the way he held me through the panic attack and never once made me feel small for it.
I love the way he listened to everything about Stellan without interrupting and without trying to fix it before I was done speaking.
I love that when I asked for space, he gave it to me without question, even though I know it’s killing him.
He didn’t push. He didn’t demand answers or timelines or promises.
He just accepted me exactly as I was — broken parts and all — and welcomed me back in.
And made me feel like I could take all the time I needed and he’d still be there.
I love that he’s been taking care of me in small ways I didn’t ask for. Probably worrying himself sick these past three days while respecting the boundary I drew.
And I love Westerly Point.
God, I love it here.
I love the way the ocean sounds different every day.
Wild and crashing on stormy mornings, gentle and hypnotic on clear afternoons.
I love Margo and her cafe and her blunt advice delivered with cookies still warm from the oven.
I love the way Patrick welcomed me into his home like I’d always belonged there.
I love the way Frannie lights up when she talks about literally anything and how Cora delivers devastating critiques of other people’s plating with complete neutrality, flour perpetually dusting her dark braids.
I love how Roman makes terrible puns during prep that make everyone groan but also secretly smile.
I love that this town rallied around Callum. They showed up and filled every seat and celebrated something beautiful happening in their community.
This feels like home.
For the first time in five years, a place feels like home.
So what’s next?
The question has been sitting in my head for days, and I still don’t have an answer.
I can’t go back to the consulting life. The constant moving and the hotel rooms that all look the same and the Airbnbs with their generic furniture. Keeping everyone at a distance. No real friends. I can’t do it anymore.
I don’t want to do it anymore.
But I don’t know if I can stay here either.
Because staying means facing the investors and their demand to rebrand.
Staying means watching Callum have to choose between the restaurant he built and the name that means everything to him.
Staying means being part of something I might not be able to save.
And staying means being honest about what I want.
Which is him.
I want Callum. I want to wake up in Westerly Point and go to Margo’s for coffee and help Frannie with social media strategy and argue with Callum about menu pricing.
I want to taste Roman’s experimental sauces and listen to Cora explain the chemistry of laminated dough with that deadpan delivery that makes everything sound like a threat.
I want Sunday dinners at Patrick’s with all the Reid brothers talking over each other, Beckett telling surf stories, Hayes sketching building plans on napkins, Wesley pretending to be annoyed while secretly enjoying every second.
I want dinners with Iris in Crescent Bay where she tells me about the books she’s editing and the news she’s researching and we drink too much wine.
I want to help Sloane figure out her business plans for the fishing company.
I want to fall asleep listening to the ocean through open windows.
I want to stay.
But I don’t know if I get to. If I’ve earned it. If —
The window explodes.
Glass erupts inward in a spray of glittering shards as something massive and dark crashes through, the sound of impact so loud it feels like it’s inside my head, rattling my skull. I scream, throwing my arms up to protect my face, the blanket falling away from my shoulders.