Chapter One – A Storm Brewing Beneath My Skin

Ava

The “Welcome to Haven Cove” sign looms ahead, its weathered blue paint peeling at the edges like a metaphor for all the memories I’ve tried to strip away. My knuckles whiten against the steering wheel as I ease off the gas, the rental car slowing to a crawl. Ten years. Ten years since I last drove down this coastal road, since I promised myself I’d never look back.

Yet here I am.

The late May air drifts through my cracked window, carrying the unmistakable scent of salt and pine that I’ve never been able to find anywhere else. Not in Boston. Not in the sterile publishing office where I spent the last decade trying to build a life that felt nothing like home.

My throat tightens. I’ve mentally rehearsed this homecoming a hundred times since Mom’s lawyer called three weeks ago, but nothing prepared me for how visceral it would feel—this collision of who I was and who I’ve become.

“Get it together, Ava,” I mutter, flicking on my blinker though there’s not another car for miles. Old habits. This town taught me caution in more ways than one.

The two-lane road curves around the familiar bend where the Atlantic finally comes into view—a vast blue eternity stretching beyond the rocky shoreline. My breath catches. Some things never change. The lighthouse stands sentinel on its rocky perch, white against the deepening blue of approaching evening. I force my eyes away, focusing instead on the road ahead. That lighthouse holds too many promises. Too many lies.

I press my palm against my chest, willing my heart to a steadier rhythm as Haven Cove unfolds before me—a picture-perfect coastal town that tourists adore and I’ve spent years trying to forget. The tidy rows of clapboard houses. The hanging flower baskets along Main Street. The fishing boats bobbing in the harbor like toys in a child’s bathtub.

My rental car eases past the town square with its white-painted gazebo where summer concerts still happen every Friday night, if the banner strung across the street is any indication. Nothing’s changed, yet everything feels smaller somehow. Or maybe I’ve just grown.

As I turn onto Sycamore Lane, the familiar weight of dread settles heavier in my chest. I’m not ready for this—to face the emptiness of Mom’s house, to sort through the remnants of her life, to save a failing bookstore I never wanted to inherit. Most of all, I’m not ready for the ghosts. One ghost in particular.

Damien.

Even thinking his name sends an unwelcome flutter through my stomach. Ridiculous. I’m twenty-eight years old, not eighteen. I’ve built a life, dated other men, earned my scars. Yet somehow, the whisper of his name still reverberates through me like a tuning fork struck against bone.

I shake my head, forcing away the image that always accompanies his name—dark eyes that saw too much, hands that knew every inch of me, promises whispered against my skin that turned to ash in my mouth.

I slow to a stop in front of my childhood home. The little blue Victorian with white trim looks exactly as it did in my dreams and nightmares—except the garden is overgrown now, wild and untamed in a way Mom would have never allowed. It makes me ache, this tangible evidence of her absence.

I don’t go inside. Not yet. I can’t face those empty rooms right now, the echo of her voice, the spaces she should still fill. Instead, I reverse out of the driveway, heading toward town. Food first. Courage later.

Five minutes later, I park outside The Salty Mug, the café where I worked summers during high school. It’s been renovated—sleeker now, with copper light fixtures and navy blue awnings—but the scent of fresh-baked pastries and rich coffee still wafts through the air as I push open the door.

The line is three deep, locals and early-season tourists mingling in the warm space. I keep my head down, sliding oversized sunglasses over my eyes though I’m indoors. Childish, maybe, but I’m not ready for the whispers. The pity. The questions about why I stayed away so long, not even returning for Mom’s funeral two months ago.

Some sins are unforgivable in a town like Haven Cove.

But even with my gaze fixed on the polished concrete floor, I feel the electricity in the air shift. The fine hairs on my arms rise before my mind can process why. My body remembers what my brain wants to forget. I’ve always been attuned to him, like a compass needle spinning helplessly toward magnetic north.

I know he’s here before I see him.

I force myself to look up, and the world stops spinning.

Damien Carter stands near the back of the café, one broad shoulder leaned against the exposed brick wall, a ceramic mug cradled in hands that are more weathered than I remember. His dark hair is shorter, his jaw sharper, his shoulders broader under a faded navy henley pushed up to reveal forearms corded with muscle. He’s talking to someone—a redheaded barista who’s laughing at whatever he’s just said—but his eyes… his eyes are already fixed on me.

He sensed me too.

The recognition hits us both simultaneously. I watch as his entire body stills, the mug freezing halfway to his lips. Even from across the room, I can see the shock ripple across features that have grown more handsome with age—the boyish good looks hardened into something more dangerous. More devastating.

His eyes—those deep, whiskey-brown eyes—widen, then narrow, like he can’t trust what he’s seeing. Like I’m an apparition conjured from his memory rather than flesh and blood.

The woman behind the counter calls, “Next customer, please,” but I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t tear my gaze from the man who once held my heart in his hands before crushing it to dust.

Someone bumps against me, muttering an apology, breaking the spell. I blink rapidly, forcing oxygen back into my lungs. I should leave. Right now. Turn around, walk out the door, find another café in another part of town. But my feet remain rooted to the worn hardwood floor as Damien sets down his mug with deliberate care and begins moving toward me.

Each step he takes feels like thunder in my veins. The café noise fades to a distant buzz as he moves through the space between us—a space that once held promise and future and forever. Now it holds only the wreckage of what might have been.

He stops three feet away. Close enough that I can smell him—cedar and salt and something darker, richer. Close enough that I can see the tiny scar above his right eyebrow from a long-ago swimming accident. Close enough that I have to tilt my chin up to meet his gaze.

“Ava.” My name on his lips sounds like a prayer and a curse woven together. His voice is deeper than I remember, rougher around the edges. It slides over my skin like a physical touch.

I swallow hard, hating how my body responds to him—the quickening pulse, the heat unfurling low in my belly. Ten years of carefully constructed defenses, and he dismantles them with a single word.

“Damien.” I’m proud of how steady my voice sounds. How cool. As if we’re distant acquaintances crossing paths at a class reunion rather than former lovers with a history that burned so bright it left us both in ashes.

His gaze travels over my face, lingering on features that must have changed since he last saw me. I resist the urge to touch my hair—shorter now, falling in waves to my shoulders instead of the long curtain it once was. I resist the urge to wonder if he likes what he sees. If he’s comparing me to the girl I was or the women who’ve warmed his bed since.

“I heard about your mother,” he says softly. “I’m sorry, Ava. She was a good woman.”

The genuine regret in his voice makes my throat tighten. Mom always liked Damien, even after everything. She never knew the whole story. Nobody did.

“Thank you.” I’m still wearing my sunglasses, grateful for the barrier, however flimsy.

A silence stretches between us, heavy with unspoken words. In the background, the café hums with conversation and the hiss of the espresso machine, but here in our bubble, time seems suspended.

His eyes never leave mine as he asks, “How long are you staying?”

There’s an undercurrent to his question—a ripple of tension beneath the casual inquiry. My answer matters to him. I can see it in the subtle tightening of his jaw, the stillness of his breathing.

“A while,” I say, deliberately vague. “I need to settle Mom’s affairs. The bookstore…” I trail off, not wanting to reveal how precarious things are. How much I’m struggling.

“I heard it’s been—” He stops himself, reconsidering whatever he was about to say. “If you need anything, Ava. Anything at all.”

The sincerity in his voice catches me off guard. This isn’t the cocky boy I remember, the golden child of Haven Cove with his easy smiles and reckless promises. This man watching me with careful eyes is someone different. Someone who’s lived and lost and learned, just as I have.

It makes him more dangerous somehow.

“I don’t need anything from you,” I say, the words sharper than I intended. Old wounds bleed fresh at the sight of him. “Not anymore.”

Pain flashes across his features—there and gone so quickly I might have imagined it. But I know better. I always could read him, even when I wished I couldn’t.

“Fair enough,” he says quietly. “But my offer stands.”

A strand of hair falls across my cheek, and before I can react, he’s reaching out. His fingers hover in the space between us, not quite touching me. I hold my breath, caught between the urge to step back and the treacherous desire to lean into his touch.

The moment stretches taut as a wire between us.

Then his hand falls away, and I exhale slowly, ignoring the irrational disappointment that courses through me.

“I should go,” I murmur, glancing toward the door. The need to escape suddenly overwhelms me. This is too much, too soon. I’m not prepared for the storm of emotions he stirs in me—anger and attraction battling beneath my skin.

I turn away, no longer caring about coffee or food or anything but putting distance between us.

“Ava, wait.”

It’s the same voice that once whispered promises against my skin beneath a star-filled sky. The same voice that fell silent when I needed it most. I shouldn’t stop. I shouldn’t turn around.

But I do.

“I know you hate me,” he says, his voice low enough that only I can hear. “You have every right to. But there are things you don’t know. Things I need to tell you.”

A hollow laugh escapes me. “A decade too late, don’t you think?”

“Maybe.” His eyes hold mine, intense and unflinching. “Or maybe right on time.”

The café suddenly feels too small, the air too thin. Memories press in from all sides—Damien’s hands in my hair, his laughter against my neck, the lighthouse keeper’s cottage where we first touched each other with trembling hands. The hollowed-out feeling the morning I found his note. The sickness that followed. The dreams that died.

“I have to go,” I repeat, more firmly this time. I step around him, heading for the door, my coffee forgotten.

I make it three steps before his voice reaches me again.

“I never stopped, you know.”

I freeze, my back to him, my hand halfway to the door. I don’t turn around. I don’t ask what he means. I don’t need to. The weight of his words settles into my bones like lead.

I never stopped loving you.

He doesn’t need to say it. I hear it anyway.

“Goodbye, Damien,” I whisper, pushing through the café door into the late afternoon sunshine. The bell jingles cheerfully behind me, at odds with the tempest building in my chest.

I’m halfway to my car when I hear the door open again. Footsteps approach rapidly—confident, determined. I know who it is without looking. My body still recognizes the rhythm of his stride.

“Damn it, Ava.” Damien moves in front of me, blocking my path. He’s close enough now that I can see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes, the day’s stubble darkening his jaw. “You can’t just walk away. Not again.”

“I walked away?” Incredulity sharpens my voice. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

Pain flashes across his features, but he doesn’t back down. “I know what you think happened. I know what it looked like. But it wasn’t what you think.”

“Save it.” I try to step around him, but he shifts, still blocking my escape. “It’s ancient history.”

“Then why are you shaking?”

His question catches me off guard. I glance down at my hands, betrayed by their subtle tremor. When I look up, his expression has softened.

“You think I don’t know what it cost you to come back here?” he asks quietly. “To face all of this? To face me?”

The tenderness in his voice threatens to undo me. This is what always made Damien so lethal—his ability to see through my armor to the vulnerable places beneath.

“You don’t know anything about me anymore,” I say, but the conviction in my voice wavers.

He steps closer, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body. Close enough that anyone watching from the café windows would think we’re about to embrace. Or fight. Maybe both.

“I know you bite your lip when you’re nervous, like you’re doing right now.” His gaze drops to my mouth, and I release my lower lip, unaware I’d been worrying it between my teeth. “I know you came back for your mom’s bookstore, even though leaving was all you ever talked about. I know you’re scared, but you’re here anyway, because that’s who you are, Ava. You face things head-on, even when it breaks you.”

His words strike too close to home, peeling back layers I’ve carefully built over the raw places he left behind. I take a step back, needing distance.

“What do you want from me, Damien?”

He runs a hand through his hair—a familiar gesture that sends an unwelcome pang of nostalgia through me. “Five minutes. A conversation. A chance to explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain.” I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warm spring air. “You made your choice ten years ago. We both have to live with it.”

His jaw tightens, a muscle ticking in his cheek. “It wasn’t like that. There were reasons—”

“I don’t care about your reasons.” The lie tastes bitter on my tongue. “What’s done is done.”

For a moment, I think he’ll argue. The Damien I knew would have pushed harder, his temper flaring hot and quick. But this man just watches me, something unreadable passing behind his eyes.

“Okay,” he says finally. “Not today. But this isn’t over, Ava. Not by a long shot.”

There’s a promise in his words, one that sends a shiver down my spine—not entirely from fear. Something darker, more primal, flickers to life inside me. Something I thought I’d extinguished years ago.

“It’s been over for a decade,” I say, but even to my own ears, the words sound hollow.

His lips curve into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Then why does it still feel like we’re bleeding?”

Before I can respond, he steps aside, clearing my path to the car. The sudden capitulation catches me off guard. I expect another plea, another argument. Instead, he simply watches me, his eyes burning with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.

“Welcome home, Ava,” he says softly as I move past him.

Home. The word echoes in my chest like a stone dropped into still water. This town hasn’t been home in a very long time. And the man standing before me—he was home once. The kind of home you carry in your bones, in the chambers of your heart.

But homes can burn. Hearts can break. And some paths are better left untraveled a second time.

I don’t look back as I slide into my car and pull away from the curb. But in my rearview mirror, I see him standing where I left him, watching me drive away. Again.

The difference is, this time, there’s resolve etched into the lines of his face. This time, I know he won’t let me disappear so easily.

This time, I’m afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t.