The smoky scent of grilled halibut and charred corn lingered in the cooling air, a welcome ghost of the evening’s success. Salty MacLeod had just departed, his beat-up pickup truck rattling down the long gravel drive, leaving a comfortable silence in his wake.
Lena stacked the last of the paper plates, her movements efficient and practiced, a stark contrast to the lazy swirl of dusk painting the sky in shades of bruised plum and soft peach.
They had done it—a proper, civilized social event. A “thank you” barbecue for Salty, whose gruff guidance had become as indispensable as Finn’s creative vision or her own project management spreadsheets.
The old fisherman had accepted their invitation with a skeptical grunt, but had arrived with a freshly caught halibut and a rare, almost-smile. He’d surveyed the newly repaired porch railing and the first gleaming coat of white paint on the seaward-facing wall.
“Don’t look half-bad,” he’d conceded, which from Salty was the equivalent of a glowing commendation.
The small victory felt disproportionately large. It wasn’t just the progress on the lighthouse; it was the proof that she and Finn could function as a unit, could host a guest without their past resentments bubbling over.
“I think he actually enjoyed himself,” Finn said, breaking the quiet. He was scraping the grill with a wire brush, the rhythmic rasp a soothing sound against the gentle wash of the tide below.
“He ate three pieces of fish. For Salty, that’s practically a standing ovation,” Lena replied, a genuine smile touching her lips.
She carried the stack of plates inside to the newly functional kitchen, its butter-yellow walls still smelling faintly of fresh paint and optimism.
When she returned, Finn had finished with the grill and was poking at the embers in the small, makeshift fire pit they’d cleared on the bluff. The flames sputtered back to life, casting a warm, flickering glow on his face, softening the sharp lines of his jaw and deepening the shadows under his cheekbones.
He’d un-corked a bottle of red wine they’d been saving and had two mismatched mugs sitting on the stone ledge.
“Cleanup crew deserves a reward,” he said, pouring a generous amount into each. He handed one to her, his fingers brushing hers for a fraction of a second too long.
A tiny jolt, like static electricity, passed between them. Lena took the mug, her gaze dropping to the dark liquid swirling inside.
She sat on the cool stone opposite him, tucking her legs beneath her. The day in the sea cave felt like a lifetime ago, a dream of salt spray and shared adrenaline.
This was different. Quieter. More real, and somehow, more dangerous.
“To a successful mission,” Finn said, raising his mug. “First the cave, now a barbecue. We’re on a roll.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Lena said, though she clinked her mug against his.
“We still have Brenda’s next certified letter to look forward to.” But the words lacked their usual sharp edge.
The wine was smooth, warming her from the inside out, and the fire felt like a protective circle against the encroaching night.
For a while, they just sat, listening to the crackle of the fire and the distant cry of a gull. The tension that usually hummed between them, that low-frequency current of unresolved arguments and unspoken hurts, had dissipated, leaving a vacuum in its place.
It felt strange, like walking into a noisy room that had suddenly gone silent.
“The partnership track at my firm,” Lena began, her voice softer than usual, “it’s not what I thought it would be.”
The confession hung in the air, unprompted and unexpected. Finn looked at her, his expression unreadable in the firelight.
He didn’t fill the silence, just waited, giving her the space to continue. It was a courtesy he hadn’t always extended, and she was grateful for it.
“It’s this mountain you’re supposed to want to climb,” she explained, staring into the flames.
“Everyone’s competing. You work eighty-hour weeks, you sacrifice weekends, you live on lukewarm coffee and the adrenaline of closing a deal.
You do it all because the view from the top is supposed to be worth it.” She took a sip of wine.
“But the closer I get, the more I realize the view is just… more mountains. Taller, steeper ones. There’s no summit. Just a series of false peaks.”
She hadn’t said this aloud to anyone, not even herself. To admit it felt like a betrayal of the ambitions that had defined her for a decade.
“I won a huge case last spring. A multi-million-dollar intellectual property dispute.
We celebrated for about five minutes before a senior partner dropped a new case file on my desk and said, ‘Don’t get complacent.’ That’s the whole job in a nutshell.
Don’t get complacent. Never stop climbing.”
Finn was quiet for a long moment. “I never understood why you drove yourself so hard,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
“I thought you just loved the fight.”
“I thought so too,” she admitted.
“But fighting is exhausting when you’re not sure what you’re fighting for anymore. This money… the inheritance… I saw it as a way to buy myself some breathing room.
Maybe even start my own small practice, something with more purpose. But even that felt like another business plan, another goal to achieve.”
He nodded, turning a piece of driftwood over in the fire with a long stick. Sparks danced up into the indigo sky.
“I get that. The feeling of being on a treadmill.”
He sighed, a sound heavy with his own frustrations.
“I had a gallery show lined up last year. A big one. In Boston.
It was going to be my ‘arrival.’ The moment I could finally stop telling people I was a ‘struggling artist’ and just be… an artist.”
Lena looked at him. He’d never told her the details, only that it had “fallen through.”
In the bitter landscape of their divorce, his professional disappointments had seemed irrelevant to her own.
“The gallery owner loved my portfolio,” Finn continued, his eyes fixed on the fire. “But then he started talking about what ‘sells.’
He wanted more seascapes, more ‘commercially appealing’ subjects. He told me my work was too moody, too introspective.
He wanted me to be a different photographer than the one he’d offered the show to in the first place.” Finn tossed the stick into the flames, where it was quickly consumed.
“I walked. Told him to find someone else to shoot pretty pictures for hotel lobbies.
It felt righteous at the time. But afterward… I just felt like an idiot.
Like I’d chosen pride over my career. Again.”
Lena heard the echo of their old fights in his words. She had called him reckless, impractical.
He had called her a sellout, obsessed with security. But hearing his side of it now, stripped of anger and accusation, it sounded different.
It sounded like integrity.
“That doesn’t make you an idiot, Finn,” she said softly. “It makes you an artist.”
His gaze lifted from the fire and met hers. There was a raw vulnerability in his eyes she hadn’t seen since the very early days of their marriage.
“And what about you, Lena? Chasing a partnership you don’t even want. Does that make you a lawyer?”
The question was gentle, but it landed with the force of a physical blow. She had no answer.
The carefully constructed identity she’d built for herself was beginning to feel like a cage. Here, with peeling paint on her hands and the smell of salt in her hair, she felt more herself than she had in years.
The bottle of wine was nearly empty. The moon had risen, a perfect silver disc casting a shimmering path across the water.
The fire had burned down to a bed of glowing orange coals. The space between them was no longer a vacuum, but a field of charged particles, humming with a new and terrifying energy.
Finn shifted, moving from his stone perch to sit beside her on the ledge. He didn’t touch her, but she could feel the heat radiating from him.
“Maeve saw it, you know,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
“In us. She thought… she thought we balanced each other. Your spreadsheets and my daydreams. I always thought she was just being a romantic.”
“She was,” Lena whispered back, her heart beginning to beat a frantic, unfamiliar rhythm against her ribs.
“Maybe,” he said, his eyes tracing the line of her profile in the dim light. “Or maybe she just saw the thing we kept refusing to see.”
He reached out then, his touch tentative, his fingers gently brushing a stray strand of hair from her cheek. His skin was warm, his touch sending a cascade of shivers down her spine.
All the reasons this was a bad idea—the will, the business arrangement, the 365-day contract, the wreckage of their past—assembled in her mind like a legal brief. But her body wasn’t listening to her brain. Her body was leaning in.
When his lips met hers, it wasn’t a gentle exploration. It was a collision.
A powerful, desperate reclaiming of something long lost. It was full of the salt of the sea and the smoke of the fire and the taste of wine, but underneath it all was the stunning, undeniable flavor of familiarity.
Of home. It was a kiss that held every laughing memory from their honeymoon and every bitter word from their divorce.
It was a decade of love and pain and regret, all compressed into a single, breathtaking moment.
Lena’s hands came up to tangle in his hair, pulling him closer, while his arms wrapped around her waist, lifting her effortlessly against him.
The logical, pragmatic part of her brain screamed a silent, frantic warning, but it was drowned out by the overwhelming roar of pure, unadulterated feeling.
It lasted for an eternity and for no time at all.
When they finally broke apart, they were both breathless. The sound of the waves seemed amplified in the sudden, ringing silence.
Finn’s forehead rested against hers, his eyes closed. Lena’s were wide open, staring at the pulse beating in his throat.
The connection was profound, a live wire humming between them. But in its wake, a cold tide of fear began to creep in.
What have we done?
The thought was so clear, so sharp, it felt as though she’d spoken it aloud. This kiss wasn’t on the timeline.
It didn’t fit into any budget. It was a variable she hadn’t accounted for, a complication of catastrophic proportions.
It threatened the fragile accords, the careful truce they had built. It threatened everything.
Finn pulled back slowly, his hands dropping from her waist. The confusion was plain on his face, mirroring her own.
The intimacy of a moment ago had evaporated, replaced by a thick, suffocating awkwardness. The chasm between them had returned, wider and deeper than before.
“Lena, I…” he started, but the words died on his lips.
“It’s late,” she said abruptly, scrambling to her feet. Her legs felt unsteady. “We should… we have to get an early start tomorrow.”
She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t.
If she saw longing in his eyes, she might break. If she saw regret, she might shatter.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. “Right. Early start.”
Without another word, Lena turned and walked back toward the dark lighthouse, the screen door sighing shut behind her. She fled to the solitude of her dusty room, her lips still tingling, her heart a frantic prisoner in her chest.
She had just shared a moment of absolute truth with Finn, only to be overwhelmed by the immediate, terrifying fear that it was all based on a beautiful lie.