The goodnight smiles still feel plastered to my face as I click my villa door shut, the solid thud of wood against frame sounding like a period at the end of a very long, very polite sentence. I lean against it, letting the polite mask crack, and my gaze immediately snags on the other door. The one opposite mine, across the stone-tiled courtyard now bathed in wavering torchlight. It’s identical to mine, except for the sliver of gold light bleeding from beneath it. Sebastian’s door. A year of distance, a dinner of excruciating civility, and now about fifteen feet of Spanish tile. My sister, the master planner.

I dig my phone out of my silk clutch, my thumb finding Amelia’s contact with practiced urgency. It rings twice before she answers, her voice crisp with the efficiency of someone mid-checklist. “Imogen? Everything alright with the villa?”

“The villa is stunning. It’s a masterpiece. Who did you bribe for this architectural betrayal?” I pace to the glass doors that open onto the courtyard, staring at the rectangle of light from his suite. “Why is my private courtyard a throughway to Sebastian’s private courtyard?”

There’s a beat of what I imagine is her scrolling through a spreadsheet. “Oh, that. All the other suites with private outdoor space were taken. I thought since Mark was with you, you wouldn’t mind sharing a wall. It’s not a wall, it’s a whole bloody piazza.”

“Mark isn’t here,” I say, my voice flattening. “He’s not coming for a week. You didn’t know that?”

The silence on the other end is profoundly informative. “He’s… what? No, I didn’t know that. You said he was coming for the wedding.” Her tone shifts from planner to slightly flustered older sister. “Imogen, I’m sorry. The resort is fully booked. There’s literally nowhere else to put either of you. Just… don’t use the courtyard.”

“Right. I’ll just teleport to the beach,” I mutter, ending the call before she can suggest a schedule for avoiding him. I toss the phone onto the plush duvet. It lands with a soft thump, a tiny surrender. The frustration is a hot, restless thing under my skin. I walk to the other set of doors, the ones that open from the courtyard directly onto the beach, and unlatch them. The night air rushes in, thick with salt and the rhythmic sigh of the ocean. The black water is stitched with silver threads of moonlight, endlessly rolling in and out. A late-night swim. A walk. Something to wear this jagged energy out. I don’t bother with a suit. The beach is dark, the world is asleep. I slip off my sandals and step out onto the cool, damp sand.

The ocean is a shock of cold that seizes my ankles, then my calves, a brutal clarity that cuts through the fog of frustrated adrenaline. I keep walking, the silk of my dress floating up around my thighs, dark and heavy with saltwater. The Pacific doesn’t care about my sister’ seating charts or my ex-lover’s proximity. It just is. Deep, black, and endlessly moving. I suck in a sharp breath as the water hits my hips, the chill a physical eraser on the last hour of polite tension.

“A midnight baptism,” I say to the empty horizon, my voice swallowed by the surf. “Washing away the sin of good manners.” I should turn back. This is how horror movies start. But the water feels more honest than the villa, than the courtyard, than the sliver of light under his door. I go deeper until the water licks at my ribs, my dress now a weightless ghost orbiting my body. I tilt my head back, looking at the spill of stars, and for a moment, it works. The vast, cold silence empties me out.

The sound of a foot scuffing on wet sand is as abrupt as a gunshot. I jerk upright, water sloshing, my heart jackhammering against my ribs. A tall, dark silhouette stands at the tide line, backlit by the distant torchlight of the courtyard. He’s still in his dinner trousers, but the white shirt is untucked, sleeves rolled to his elbows. Sebastian. Of course. The universe has a truly shit sense of humor.

“Planning a channel swim?” His voice carries over the low rush of waves, dry as bone. “The water temperature is approximately fifteen degrees Celsius. Hypothermia sets in rather quickly, even for those of a… dramatic constitution.”

I cross my arms over my chest, the soaked silk offering zero protection. “It’s called thinking. You should try it sometime. It’s quieter than brooding in doorways.”

“I was on my terrace. You are in my sightline. Acoustics of the cove.” He takes a few steps closer, his feet bare too, his steps careful on the uneven sand. He stops a few yards away, a respectable perimeter. “Amelia called me. Apologized for the… architectural conspiracy. She suggested I ensure you hadn’t drowned yourself in a fit of pique.”

“How thoughtful of her. You can report back that I’m merely contemplating mortality, not courting it.” The bravado feels thin, shivering as I am. “Your mission is complete. You may retreat to your side of the demilitarized zone.”

He doesn’t move. His gaze is on me, a palpable weight in the dark. “You’re shaking.”

“It’s called being cold, Sebastian. It’s a thing that happens to mammals.”

“Come out of the water.” It’s not a request. It’s a quiet, implacable command that somehow lacks all his usual condescension. It’s just fact.

“I like it here.”

“You’re turning blue. Your lips are literally the colour of a bruise.” A pause. “Please.”

The ‘please’ does it. It’s the crack, the concession. I’m too cold to fight it. I wade back in, the water releasing me reluctantly, my dress clinging to every curve, dripping a path behind me. I feel absurdly exposed, like a shipwreck victim. He doesn’t offer a hand. He just watches, his face unreadable in the shadows, until I’m standing on the damp sand before him, hugging myself. Water pools at my feet.

He shrugs out of his shirt.

My brain short-circuits. “What are you—”

“You’re freezing. And I’m not carrying you back because you collapse from idiocy.” In one fluid motion, he steps forward and drapes the white linen around my shoulders. It’s warm from his body, smelling faintly of sea air, starch, and him. The heat is an immediate, shocking balm. He stands close, his hands lingering for a second on the fabric at my shoulders, not touching me, just ensuring it’s settled. His bare chest is pale in the moonlight, the defined planes of muscle and the dark trail of hair below his navel a stark, silent fact. My breath hitches.

“There,” he says, his voice low. “A tactical retreat is always wiser than a glorious, frozen defeat.” He steps back, creating distance again, his eyes holding mine. The torchlight from the courtyard catches the blue of them, and for a second, I see it. Not assessment. Not civility. Something raw and unchecked, the same thing I felt staring at him across the dinner table. Then it’s gone, banked behind a wall of proper British concern. “Come on,” he says, turning toward the villas. “Before you actually do become a tragic Shakespearean footnote.”

The linen shirt is a warm, borrowed skin as I follow him across the courtyard, the torchlight throwing our long, dancing shadows over the tiles. The scent of him—starch and sea and something cleanly male—wraps around me tighter than the fabric. My body is a traitor, already thawing into the heat he left behind. As we pass the central fountain, its quiet burble the only sound besides our footsteps, I let my shoulders slump just so. The shirt slips, the fine fabric sliding off my right shoulder, baring my damp, cool skin to the night air. It’s a test. A tiny, silent provocation flung into the space between us. I don’t look back.

He stops walking. I hear the slight scuff of his bare feet on stone. I keep going, five more steps to my door, feeling the weight of his gaze like a physical touch on the exposed curve of my shoulder. “Your shirt is attempting a defection,” I say, my voice carefully light as I finally turn. He’s standing there, a dark silhouette against the flickering gold light, his arms crossed over his bare chest. It’s a stance meant to look impatient. It looks like he’s holding himself together.

“It’s demonstrating a regrettable lack of tensile integrity,” he replies, but he doesn’t move to fix it. His eyes are on that strip of bare skin. “Or a calculated one.”

“Everything with me is calculated, Sebastian. You know that.” I lean my hip against my doorframe, making no move to pull the fabric back up. The ocean breeze kisses the exposed skin, raising goosebumps. “I’m a mastermind of midnight swims and slipping tailoring.”

He exhales, a short, quiet sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “A mastermind.” He takes a single step forward, then another, closing half the distance between us. The torchlight catches the planes of his chest, the defined cut of his abdomen. My breath shallows. “Retrieve your key,” he says, his voice low. “Before you achieve your next strategic goal of locking yourself out.”

I fumble in the small pocket of my soaked dress, fingers numb. The key feels cold and small. I fit it into the lock, the click loud in the quiet courtyard. I push the door open a fraction, a wedge of dark room behind me. The moment stretches, taut and silent. I am standing in my doorway. He is standing in our shared courtyard. His shirt is falling off my shoulder. A year ago, he knew every inch of that skin. Now, fifteen feet might as well be a continent. “Well,” I say, because someone has to. “Mission accomplished. Guest secured. You can file your report with command.”

He doesn’t leave. His gaze flicks from my shoulder to my eyes, and the raw thing I saw on the beach is back, blazing beneath the surface of his civility. “The shirt,” he says finally, the word rough.

“Do you want it back?” I ask, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. “You’ll have to come and get it.” It’s a challenge. A line in the sand. Or in the tile.

For three long seconds, he just looks at me. I can see the debate in the tight line of his jaw, the slight flare of his nostrils. The proper professor warring with the man who once mapped my body with his mouth. Then, his eyes shutter. He takes a deliberate step back, reclaiming the distance. “Keep it. You’re still shivering.” He turns toward his own door, the muscles in his back moving with fluid grace. “Goodnight, Imogen.”

He doesn’t look back. He opens his door, the slice of golden light widening to swallow him, and then it’s just me, standing alone in the courtyard, clutching his warm shirt around me, more unsettled than I was in the freezing sea. His door clicks shut. A period. But it doesn’t feel like the end of the sentence at all.