The ocean had always whispered her name soft, endless, and aching like something half-remembered.
Seraphine Hale stood at the edge of the crumbling cliff path, sea breeze tangled in her hair, salt biting gently at her lips. The world below moved in slow motion: waves curling against the rocks, gulls sweeping through the clouds, and the faint hum of summer drifting in from the distant town. Everything looked the same. And yet, it didn't because he wasn't supposed to be here.
She hadn't stepped foot on Crestview Coast in nearly three years, not since the night everything changed. The night he vanished.
Now, the same sky was painted in familiar golds and pinks, just like that night the kind of sunset that didn't feel real until it disappeared.
And then she heard it the sound of footsteps behind her.
She didn't turn right away. She couldn't. Her heart was already hammering out a name she'd trained herself to forget.
"Seraphine."
His voice.
Low. Rougher than before. But still him.
She turned.
And there he was Rowan Crest.
The boy she loved. The ghost she never buried.
Sunlight framed him like a memory she was afraid to touch. His hair was longer now, messy from the sea air. His eyes were the same stormy, distant, but softer when they landed on her. Time had tried to change him, but the feeling in her chest said otherwise.
He took a step closer.
"You came back," he said, his voice almost drowned out by the waves.
"So did you," she replied, her voice steady, even though everything inside her wasn't.
There was silence, heavy with the weight of words unspoken, apologies unmade, and kisses never given. And yet, in that silence, something deeper bloomed a connection neither distance nor time had dared to break.
As the sun dropped lower, casting the cliffs in hues of honey and fire, Seraphine looked at him and knew: this wasn't just a return. It was a beginning.
Or maybe…
A countdown.
The silence between them wasn't empty, it was full. Of every word, they hadn't said. Every look they never held long enough. Every moment that had lived only in the spaces between them.
Rowan's eyes swept over her slowly, reverently, like he was trying to memorize the shape of her all over again.
"You cut your hair," he murmured.
"And you didn't," she replied, trying to smile. It came out crooked.
He gave a soft breath not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. "I didn't know if I was allowed to miss you."
Her breath caught. Her heart betrayed her thump thump a rhythm she was sure he could hear in the quiet between the waves.
"You left without saying goodbye, Rowan. You don't get to miss me."
"I know," he said. His voice was raw now. "But I did anyway. Every day. Every time the tide came in, I wondered if you were standing out there, somewhere else, listening to the same waves."
Seraphine's chest tightened. She turned her face toward the ocean, not trusting her voice. The sun was lower now dusk curling at the corners of the sky like a secret trying to unfold.
He moved beside her, carefully, like approaching something sacred.
"I didn't plan on seeing you again," she whispered. "Not like this. Not ever."
"And yet, here we are," he said softly. "Standing where it ended."
"No." She turned back to him, eyes burning. "Standing where it almost began."
He took a slow step forward then another until only a breath stood between them. The wind lifted her hair, brushing it across his shirt, and neither of them moved. The closeness was suffocating in the most familiar way.
"You think about that night too, don't you?" he asked. "The almost. The could have been."
"Don't," she warned, but her voice trembled.
"Why not?"
"Because you'll say something I can't un-hear."
His gaze dropped to her lips. "Maybe I want to."
And for a heartbeat just one she leaned in. So did he.
But the sky dimmed. The horizon bled into lavender. The moment passed.
They both stepped back, almost at the same time, as if dusk had pulled them apart.
"You should go," she said, swallowing the ache.
"I will," he replied, hands in his pockets, jaw clenched. "But not before I say it."
She looked up, daring him.
"I still love you, Seraphine. Even now. Even after."
Her heart fractured clean, like sea glass shaped by time.
Then he turned and walked away, leaving her standing on the cliff as the sun slipped into the sea, and the wind whispered his name like it always did.
Seraphine didn't move for a long time after Rowan disappeared down the path swallowed by the same fading light that had always taken things from her.
She wrapped her arms around herself as the breeze grew cooler. There was still sand between her toes from the walk up, still a tremble in her chest from hearing his voice. The past had always felt far away blurred like a dream seen through glass. But now it was real, sharp, walking on two feet with salt in his hair and a voice that remembered how to break her.
"I still love you…"
The words echoed like the tide coming back every time she tried to walk away from them.
She turned back toward the cliff house behind her. The shutters were rusted now, the white paint peeling from the railings. Her grandmother had passed last winter, leaving the house empty… except for memories.
And the letter.
She pulled it from her pocket and unfolded now from the creases of hesitation. Her grandmother's handwriting was gentle, and looping, but the words had struck deep when she first read them.
"There are things that run deeper than water, Seraphine. The Hale women carry love like a tide it always returns, no matter how far it drifts. But there's a story I never told you… about this place. About the curse that waits for those who kiss before dusk."
At first, she thought it was poetry. A metaphor. One of her grandmother's romantic legends.
But now, she wasn't so sure.
Because Rowan had walked back into her life just as the sun began to fall and he'd said the one thing she hadn't let herself imagine hearing again.
And they'd almost kissed.
Almost.
She looked toward the horizon, where the last sliver of sun hovered like it was holding its breath.
Was it just timing?
Or something deeper?
One last kiss before dusk… and everything could change.
She shivered. Not from the cold.
From knowing that the story their story wasn't over.
It had just begun.