The next day at Trident Marine, Ísis closed her laptop carefully, as though that dry click were both a period at the end of the workday and an attempt to organize her own thoughts.

She was putting her bag together when she heard the office door open, and she didn’t even need to turn around to know who it was. Alex had his own way of filling a room: he wasn’t loud, but he was presence. The air itself seemed to shift when he walked in.

Before she could finish what she was doing, his arms wrapped