“You coming back tomorrow?” he asked, and his voice had a question embedded in it that was both small and enormous.
Night fell like a curtain, the sky a dome of cool ink pricked with stars. Lanterns winked on shorelines near and far; the sea became a soft, attentive dark. Liz glanced back toward the horizon, where the ocean had swallowed the last strip of sun, and then to Woodman, who was tracing initials into the sand with a forefinger, not because he intended to keep them but because some marks insist on being made.
They rose together then, tamping out the remnants of their fire and leaving no more than footprints—a transient map only the tide would read. The night air greeted them, moderate and honest. The lure lay coiled at Woodman’s feet, its painted eyes catching the last of the starlight, a small, reliable thing that had crossed currents and bodies to make this link.
He hesitated only a heartbeat before taking it, fingers grazing hers—salt and warmth again—and the air sparked with something that was neither sea breeze nor coincidence. The lure passed between them, a small metal promise.
“Most of the morning.” He dug a boot into wet sand and forged a line between their worlds: rock, board, shore. “Name’s Woodman.”
“If the ocean’s willing,” she said. She folded a hand around his, not a clamp but a meeting place. “So are you.”