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EMMY

It’s the next day. Or close enough. Time bleeds around here, each day into the next.

The front door closes behind me harder than I meant it to. Not slammed, but final. Like it’s sealing me out instead of in.

Mom isn’t home.

And that changes everything.

When she’s here, things stay quiet. Or quieter. She runs interference in that half-present way of hers—soft words, empty promises. But tonight, she’s at work. And that leaves the house too still. Too exposed.

Dad made a comment over dinner. Something about my classes. The time I’m spending. The money I’m not making.

“Maybe if you put this much energy into getting a real job, you wouldn’t be mooching off us at your age.”

That wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was the way he said it while looking at the dogs. Like even they were part of the burden he carried by letting me live here.

And on top of it all—like she has a sixth sense for when I’m already down—my sister’s been texting again. She hasn’t been by in weeks, but that doesn’t stop her from weighing in. From a distance, always. Like she wants to control my life without ever actually stepping into it.

So I left. Luca knew before I grabbed the leash. Cleo was already waiting at the door.

Now I’m standing in the field, wind cutting off the ocean. The light’s gold and thin, stretching everything long and slow. Luca runs ahead, chasing nothing. Cleo walks a little closer to me than usual.

The air tastes like salt and clover. Bittersweet. Like the ache of something half-formed—too tender to hold, too unfinished to forget. Like the shape of a possibility I don’t want to name.

I crouch near the low grass, one hand in Cleo’s fur. My eyes sting, but I don’t cry. It’s not that kind of sadness. It’s the kind that sits in the middle of your chest and presses down until you forget how to breathe deep.

The number’s in my notebook, and my head. Memorized, even though I swore I wouldn’t let it matter.

Just in case, I’d told myself.

But right now… I want to call.

Not for help. Not for anything big.

Just to hear a voice that sounds like shelter. The kind of calm that isn’t just quiet—but chosen. Like the kind of presence that stays even when everything else doesn’t. Like safety. Like someone who saw me and didn’t flinch.

I wish he could see me now, and not be disappointed. Just for a second. Just enough to make this ache feel less like mine alone.

I press my hand to Cleo’s side. Luca circles back and flops beside us, panting, grinning like he doesn’t know how much the world can hurt.

“Lucky you,” I whisper.

They don’t answer. But they stay.

And right now, that’s enough.

CAL

The air’s shifting. A cold front pushing in off the ocean. The ridge catches it early.

I make the rounds anyway.

Not because I expect anything. Just because I always do. The land’s mine, and I know how to read it. The slope. The breaks in the trees. The small turns animals make when no one’s watching. I walk it every day. At different times. Never the same rhythm.

I carry the binoculars. Not for surveillance—just clarity. A way to see without guessing. The hills give a clear view down to the cove if you know where to stand.

And I do.

Today, I pause halfway through the loop. Something catches in the corner of my eye—movement by the shoreline, where the grass curls close to the water.

I raise the glass.

It’s her.

Far enough I can’t see her face. But I don’t need to.

There’s something in the way she walks now, shoulders a little higher, like she’s bracing. Tension where ease should live. Something in the line of her spine that makes me shift my weight—like I’m already halfway to her before I’ve decided to move.

My body reads it before my mind does. Something’s off. And I feel it.

The two shapes darting around her—one bounding ahead, the other staying close.

The bounding one, light and eager. The other, small and watchful.

Like it’s reading her too, mirroring that low current of tension I can feel from all the way up here.

They’re not just playing. They’re keeping pace.

Guarding in their own way. Just like I am.

I saw them once before. On a screen, weeks ago. I told myself it was just caution—just curiosity. Wanting to know more about the woman with wide eyes who didn’t flinch, but still looked like she might bolt.

One quick look. A name. A profile. And there they were.

The dogs. One tucked against her side in a photo, the other mid-leap behind her. She was laughing. Wind in her hair. Like nothing in the world had touched her yet.

I didn’t look again. I couldn’t. One glimpse was already too much to carry.

But seeing them now—real, alive, moving with her like she’s gravity—it hits something deep.

Like something I was already certain of, made real.

Like they can’t help but be pulled toward her, same as I am.

And for a second, I wonder if this is what surrender feels like; quiet, inevitable, and already done before you notice.

Of course she has dogs.

Of course they follow her like she’s the only safe thing they’ve ever known.

They know what I know.

I stay still.

Don’t call. Don’t move.

She’s sitting now. Curled down into herself, just enough to tell me something’s wrong.

She wouldn’t want to be seen like that.

But I see her anyway.

And I stay there for a long time, watching over the field, breathing slowly and steadily, like the rhythm of my breath might reach her across the distance.

Because she doesn’t need rescuing.

She just needs someone to stay.

And I will.