The sea was quieter than she remembered.  

It wasn’t really the sea—just a small stretch of coastline a few hours outside Luminara—but to Samantha, it felt like a foreign country. The air was different, cleaner, almost fragile.  

Gideon walked beside her, hands in his pockets, the morning wind tugging at his hair. “You’re terrible at vacations,” he said.  

She smiled faintly. “That obvious?”  

“You’ve checked your phone six times in ten minutes.”  

“Habit.”  

“Addiction.”  

“Semantics.”  

He gave her a look. “You didn’t come here to keep working, Sam.”  

“I’m not working.”  

“Right,” he said. “You’re just mentally reorganizing the office.”  

She sighed, pocketing her phone. “It’s not that simple.”  

“It never is with you.”  

They kept walking until the boardwalk turned to sand. The tide rolled in slow and steady, the sound stretching between them.  

By afternoon, the town’s rhythm settled into something almost unfamiliar—slower, softer.  

They ate lunch at a tiny café that smelled of lemon and salt. Gideon ordered for both of them, ignoring her half-hearted protests.  

“So,” he said, stirring his drink, “want to tell me what’s going on, or should I start guessing?”  

“Nothing’s going on.”  

“Sam.”  

She looked out the window. “It’s just work.”  

“It’s never *just* work with you.”  

He said it without accusation, just quiet truth. She didn’t argue.  

“You know,” Gideon continued, “there was a time you used to laugh at stupid things. Not politely—actually laugh. You’d tell me I was an idiot and then make fun of yourself twice as hard. You remember her?”  

Samantha took a long sip of her drink. “Barely.”  

“She’s still in there somewhere.”  

“Maybe she outgrew that version.”  

“Or maybe she just got tired of pretending she had to be someone else.”  

That stung more than she expected.  

She tried to deflect. “You sound like a therapist.”  

“Yeah, well, you can’t afford one.”  

She smiled despite herself. “True.”  

But when the laughter faded, silence crept back in, heavier than before.  

That evening, they sat on the shore with paper cups of wine. The horizon burned orange, the water silvered at the edges.  

“You ever think about leaving Luminara?” Gideon asked.  

“Sometimes,” she said. “Then I remember my rent, my mother’s doctor, and the fact that I actually like my job—most days.”  

He nodded. “And Nathan?”  

She froze. “What about him?”  

“You tell me.”  

“There’s nothing to tell.”  

“Sam.”  

She looked at the ocean instead of him. “He’s… complicated.”  

“Everyone is. That’s not an answer.”  

“He’s driven, and brilliant, and impossible. And he makes everything feel… too much.”  

Gideon tilted his head. “Too much bad or too much good?”  

“Both,” she admitted quietly.  

He smiled, soft and knowing. “Then it’s real.”  

She wanted to deny it, to argue that it wasn’t what he thought—but her silence betrayed her.  

The waves rolled closer, as if listening.  

Back in Luminara, Nathan sat alone in his office.  

It was Saturday, but the city never truly rested—and neither did he.  

The screens glowed across his desk, each one filled with numbers, emails, tasks. But none of it felt sharp. His focus scattered, fraying at the edges.  

He’d tried to distract himself—meetings, notes, half-finished reports—but the emptiness persisted. Every time the elevator dinged, he looked up, half-expecting her to walk in.  

She didn’t, of course.  

The silence was unbearable in its clarity. Without her voice echoing down the hall, the building felt like a shell—efficient, immaculate, hollow.  

He turned off one monitor, then another. The absence of light made the room heavier.  

He wasn’t used to missing people.  

He wasn’t built for it.  

Yet here he was, staring at the empty chair across his desk,  

and realizing that something in him had shifted, quietly but permanently.  

Samantha didn’t know any of that.  

She was sitting by the hotel window, watching streetlights flicker against the dark water. Gideon had gone to bed hours ago, muttering something about early trains.  

Her phone sat face down beside her. She didn’t touch it, though every minute felt like resistance.  

The room was quiet except for the hum of the old air conditioner. Outside, laughter drifted from a nearby bar, a reminder that the world kept going no matter who stopped to breathe.  

She whispered to the window, “What am I doing?”  

The reflection didn’t answer.  

She picked up her phone, unlocked it, stared at the empty message thread. The last text was still there—from weeks ago, about a meeting time.  

She typed: *The sea’s quiet here.*  

Then deleted it.  

Typed again: *You’d probably hate it here.*  

Deleted that too.  

Finally, she turned the phone off, set it on the nightstand, and let the silence win.  

Sunday morning came slow.  

Gideon insisted on breakfast by the harbor, and she let him. They ate pancakes, watched boats drift. For once, she didn’t check the time.  

“Better?” he asked.  

“A little.”  

He smiled. “See? Two days and you remembered how to breathe.”  

She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth lifted. “Don’t get used to it.”  

“I never do.”  

After breakfast, they walked back toward the station. The town was half asleep, shutters still drawn. The quiet wasn’t empty—it was restful, the kind she’d forgotten existed.  

At the platform, Gideon hugged her once, brief but firm. “Take care of yourself, Sam.”  

“I will.”  

“And maybe—just maybe—stop looking for meaning in people who make you forget your own.”  

She pulled back, studying him. “That was almost poetic.”  

He grinned. “I have my moments.”  

She boarded the train before she could say anything else.  

Nathan woke early that same morning, though he hadn’t really slept. The sky over the city was pale, blurred by fog.  

He tried to work, failed. Tried to read, failed again. Eventually, he gave up and made coffee he didn’t drink.  

He sat by the window instead, watching the city climb into motion. Delivery trucks, pedestrians, the same endless rhythm. But something about it felt misaligned.  

He thought of her—how she filled a room without meaning to, how her presence had become part of the cadence of his days. He’d never intended for that to happen.  

He picked up his phone, scrolled through his messages, paused on her name. The cursor blinked in the empty field.  

He typed: *You back?*  

Then stared at it.  

The simplicity of it felt absurd, but anything else would be too much.  

He hit send before he could second-guess himself.  

When Samantha’s train pulled into Luminara, the sun hadn’t fully risen. The station was quiet, echoing with the sound of distant announcements. She stepped onto the platform, suitcase trailing behind her.  

Her phone buzzed.  

Nathan.  

*You back?*  

She read it three times before the meaning settled in.  

There were a dozen ways she could reply. *Yes.* *Just got in.* *Why?*  

Instead, she typed nothing.  

She looked around the station—the first commuters, the pale light, the faint hum of the city waking up. It all felt strangely new, like returning to a place that had subtly rearranged itself in her absence.  

For a moment, she considered turning around, taking the next train out.  

Instead, she stood still, letting the air of the city wrap around her again.  

She finally unlocked her phone, stared at the blinking cursor,  

and whispered, almost to herself: “I’m here.”  

Then she hit send.  

Outside, the first sunlight broke through the fog.  

The city began to move.  

And somewhere across town, Nathan looked down at his phone—  

and smiled.