Chapter 185 Enrico

Chapter 185 Enrico
Enrico

Day one, we slept in till nine-fifteen. I remember the time exactly because I woke up at nine-fourteen, and I'd already been half-awake for about six minutes, trying to figure out what felt different. No alarm going off. No security checks. No familiar sounds or routines from the estate pressing in. Just the Atlantic, doing its thing outside the window, and Isla, warm and asleep beside me.

I lay there, letting the lack of urgency sink in. Honestly, it took me longer than I want to admit.

When she opened her eyes, she stared at the ceiling for a solid three seconds, the look she gets when her brain's rebooting, everything loading a bit slower without her usual morning cues.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Nine-fifteen.”

She turned to face me. “We slept until nine-fifteen.”

“Yeah.”

“When did that last happen?”

“No idea,” I said. “Probably before you got to the estate.”

She looked back up, and I saw her face shift, her smile crept in slow, not her usual quick grin, but something deeper. It was the kind of smile people get when they receive something they didn’t realize they needed.

“Okay,” she said. “Good.”

Day two, we hit the beach. November on the Maine coast, no surprise, it's freezing, the kind of cold that sneaks under collars and stings your knuckles. No one else in sight, just us, the restless water, and the Atlantic slamming against the stones.

Isla walked right at the water's edge, flirting with the bigger waves while I hung back a few feet. She scanned the ground as she went, like always, combing for interesting things.

Every few minutes, she found something. An iron-gray stone, perfectly round. A piece of sea glass, smoothed to blue-green over who knows how long. A patterned shell she inspected in the light before making a decision.

I started collecting the ones she wanted to keep. She noticed but didn’t say anything, which, for her, was its own conversation.

“You don’t have to carry them,” she said, handing me the fourth stone.

“I know.”

She studied me for a second, then gave me the next one too.

We walked for two hours. By the end, my pockets held eight stones, two bits of sea glass, and a shell. It felt good to be useful in such a small, uncomplicated way.

“These are going in my office,” she told me when we headed back.

“With the framed letter.”

“Obviously.” She shot me a look. “Is that funny to you?”

“The trophy wall? A little.”

“It’s documentation,” she insisted, for the second time that trip.

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it keeps being true.” She slid her hand into the pocket full of her stones and left it there, and we headed back towards the inn. The ocean was behind us.

Day three started with a disagreement I really should have predicted.

The inn’s restaurant had chowder. Excellent, honestly, the kind that’s rich and knows what it’s doing. Isla liked it too.

Then she peered out the window at the road.

“There’s a place down there,” she said.

I looked. There really was, a little shack with peeling paint and a handwritten sign, the kind of spot that’s been serving food since before the rest of the town showed up.

“The chowder here is great,” I said.

“It might be better there.”

“Why?”

“Places like that build up local knowledge. Their recipes evolve based on what actually comes off the boats. That sign’s not for show.”

That was such an Isla answer.

“We have chowder right now,” I pointed out.

“We could have both,” she said. “Compare.”

“That’s two bowls of chowder.”

So, at seven on a drizzly Wednesday, we sat in that tiny restaurant eating our second chowder of the night. The woman running the place watched us like we weren’t her weirdest customers, but definitely worth remembering.

The inn’s chowder was good. The one down the road was better.

I didn’t say she’d been right. She already knew; she looked so pleased about it that it didn’t need to be said.

“The stock’s the difference,” she said. “They make it from scratch every day.”

“I can taste chowder.”

“You can taste that I was right.”

“I can taste chowder,” I said again, and she grinned into her bowl and I realized I was just… happy. Uncomplicatedly happy. Which, I have to say, is a lot easier than the other kind.

Day four, rain all day.

We stayed in. Fire on by nine. By ten, we’d settled into our most comfortable arrangement: Isla curled up in the chair with her book, me stretched out on the sofa, my head in her lap. She decided that setup fast and didn’t see any reason to change it.

I hadn’t brought a book, and she was frankly scandalized.

“You didn’t bring a book?” she asked.

“I got my phone.”

“That’s not the same.”

“I’ve got lots of stuff on my phone.”

She gave me that look she reserves for my worst arguments. “I’ll find you something.”

She picked out a book from the little shelf in the corner, a history of the Maine coast. Took her all of forty-five seconds. It was actually pretty interesting. So I read that with my head in her lap while she read her novel. Every now and then, one of us said something, but sometimes not.

At one point, she ran her hand through my hair, just absent-mindedly. No reason, just because. I kept still and didn’t mention it, and she kept reading for another hour.

Day five which was the last morning.

I woke up before her as always. Took my coffee to the chair by the window and sat there in that early, gray coastal light, watching the Atlantic. The water was calm, nothing like the waves two days back. It felt patient, a big, steady presence that didn’t care who was watching.

I heard her stir behind me, the quilts shifting, a soft sound as she woke. I didn’t look back, just listened as she crossed the room and sat down next to me, her shoulder against my arm. I handed her my coffee, still without looking.

She drank, looked out at the ocean, and didn’t say anything.

We sat there together, watching how the light moved across the water. My mind went to the ring in my jacket pocket. It’d been there six weeks. Timing, that sense of waiting for the right moment, I thought about all that.

I glanced at her. She was studying the water with her usual complete attention, the same focus she gave to anything that mattered, a grant proposal, a psychological profile, a shell from the beach. She wore that little silver cross from her mother, like always.

Other things drifted through my mind. A dim warehouse and a car chase in Boston. A girl I’d once promised to protect, not knowing then what it would mean.

I reached into my jacket and felt the ring, same box, same weight, out of all seventeen options, the one I knew was right the moment I picked it up.

I opened the box.