CHAPTER SIX:
For weeks after their first date, Vanessa and Zack fell into a rhythm neither of them expected. Dinners that stretched too long, mornings where he walked her to the dockyard before returning to his ship, nights filled with laughter and heat.
It was good. Too good.
And maybe that was why the first crack felt so sharp when it came.
It started with the sea. Zack's ship was scheduled to leave again on a long voyage that would keep him away for months. Vanessa told herself she was prepared; she had always been independent, her life full of work and purpose. But when Zack broke the news over coffee one morning, her chest tightened with something she hadn't felt in years: fear of being left behind.
"So that's it?" she asked, trying to sound steady. " You are just gone again?"
Zack frowned. "Vanessa, it's my life. You knew before you met me."
"I knew you were a sailor," she snapped. "But I didn't know you'd make me feel like I mattered, only to disappear."
The words stung the moment they left her mouth, but she couldn't take them back.
Zack set his cup down, his jaw tightening. "You do matter. More than you think. But I can't just walk away from the sea. It's part of who I am.'
Silence stretched between them, heavy and unkind. Vanessa looked away, blinking hard. She hated how vulnerable she felt, how easily he unraveled her composure.
"You are asking me to wait," she whispered.
"I'm asking you to trust me," Zack replied. His voice softened, but his eyes were unyielding, storm-bright.
For the first time since they met, Vanessa didn't have an answer. Part of her wanted to believe in him, to trust that he'd return, that what they had was strong enough to survive distance and time. But another part whispered that maybe this was why she'd always kept her heart locked away. Because storms like this could wreck her.
When Zack reached her hand, she let him hold it. But her thoughts were elsewhere, caught between fear and desire, between the safety of solitude and the risk of love.
It was their first storm. And neither of them knew if they would survive it.