2

By morning, I gave up on pretending I could rest.

I stepped outside with my jacket thrown over a loose tee with a coffee in my hand.

Fog still blanketed Seabridge Bay like a secret, thick, gray and quiet. It made the town feel slower, like it haven’t quite woken up and maybe didn’t want to.

The coastline was hidden again. Only the sounds of the waves breaking against rocks and seagulls crying above proved it's still there.

Everything about this place made my skin prickle. It's too beautiful and calm like a graveyard with flowers in bloom.

The air was cold, so I tugged my sleeves over my hands and walked toward the town square. I had no real plan except to move, to breathe and to not crawl out of my skin. The silence in my guesthouse felt louder than any crime scene I have ever been on.

I wasn’t supposed to care, I was supposed to start over but the girl on the shore… she is mine now. Her story, her pain and her truth. I couldn’t stop thinking about her face, frozen and soft, like she have fallen asleep before someone took the light out of her.

And then there is Damien Cross.

The way he looked at me like he knew not just about the nightmares—but the part of me that still wanted to solve things, even if it killed me.

~

“Coffee and ink,” a voice said behind me.

I turned.

A girl with short choppy black hair, tattoos down her neck, and silver hoops in her ears held out a steaming cup. She wore a smirk and a black hoodie that said I bite in faded white letters.

“I figured you will show up eventually,” she added.

I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

She waved a hand toward the shop behind her. A narrow glass storefront with a flickering neon sign that read Lena’s Ink. “You moved in across the alley. Camille, right?”

I nodded warily. “You’re Lena.”

“Guilty, come on. We can talk where the walls don’t eavesdrop.”

Inside her shop smelled like citrus, ink, and something warm—like cinnamon. A single chair sat in the back with a tray of needles and bright red gloves. The walls were covered in drawings of angels with broken wings and women with sharp eyes.

I didn’t know why I followed her in. Maybe because she felt real or maybe because I was exhausted, curious and slightly unhinged.

She handed me the coffee and leaned against the counter.

“So,” she said, cocking her head. “You’re the cop who found her.”

I didn’t correct her, I didn’t say former cop because it didn’t matter.

“I was walking,” I replied. “She was just… there.”

Lena’s expression darkened, all the sharpness in her fading. “She’s not the first.”

My grip on the cup tightened. “What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said.” She glanced at the door, then back at me. “Girls go missing in this town. Young and pretty ones. They show up dead or don’t show up at all. And the locals pretend it’s the weather or the ocean or the drugs. But it’s not.”

“You sound sure.” I said.

“I’ve lived here long enough to know when something stinks.” Her eyes dropped to my hands.

I hesitated. “Why are you telling me this?”

She shrugged. “Because everyone else is too scared or too complicit.”

There was a silence, one of those thick ones that made you feel like the room itself was holding its breath.

Then she said, quieter, “She had a sister, once, I think. No one's talking about it but I saw them together months ago, holding hands. Like it meant something.”

I stiffened, something cold slid down my spine.

She had a sister just like Ivy had me.

Coincidence or not, it made my heart throb in a way I hated.

~

When I left Lena’s shop, the fog had gotten thicker, heavier, like a warning.

I was halfway back to the house when I heard hammering, sharp and rhythmic. Coming from my porch.

Damien.

His jacket was tossed over the railing. His sleeves were rolled and his back—broad, muscled, sinfully strong—was bent over my doorframe as he drilled something into the wood.

He turned when he heard my steps.

“Your landlord asked me to reinforce the locks,” he said. “After what happened.”

I stood at the edge of the porch and said nothing. Watching and reading him. Trying to figure out why my chest tightened every time he looked at me.

“What?” he asked, wiping his hands on a rag.

“You really fix things for a living?” I asked.

He nodded once. “Yeah, houses, rooms and whatever needs repairing.”

“What about people?” I asked again.

His eyes flicked to mine—dark and unreadable.

“Only if they want to be fixed,” he said.

I shouldn’t have let him in but I did.

Damien didn’t wait for an invitation—he walked past me like he belonged here, like this was his space, not mine. It should’ve bothered me but it didn’t. Not in the way it should.

He moved through my kitchen, ran his fingers along the counter, the fridge, the scarred wooden table I haven’t bothered to wipe down since I moved in. Then he paused at the window and stared out into the mist like he was waiting for something to come through it or someone.

“Do you always look this tense when a man holds a power drill?” he asked without turning around.

“Only when he doesn’t knock.”

He smirked faintly. “I told you—I was fixing your lock.”

“And what else do you fix?” I asked. “Besides things that don’t want to be saved?”

That made him pause. The silence between us stretched, taut as a wire.

Then he said, “I used to fix people but they break easy.”

The weight of his words hit me somewhere deep.

He sat at my table like we did this every day.

His shirt clung slightly to his chest from sweat or mist—either way, I noticed. I hated how much I noticed. His sleeves were still rolled to the elbows, revealing forearms with veins and faded scars.

Everything about him is calm except his eyes. They didn’t rest, they studied, assessed, like he is always one second from deciding whether to hold you—or hurt you.

“Tell me something,” I said after a while. “What were you doing before you ended up here?”

He didn’t flinch. “Something I don’t do anymore.”

“You say that like it's bad.” I said.

He leaned back in the chair, gaze fixed. “Because it was.”

I should’ve ended it there and ask him to leave, to take his mystery and his rough hands and go back to whatever ghost town spat him out.

But instead, I asked, “Do you believe people can change?”

He looked at me like I was asking the wrong question.