That night, the sea was louder than usual. It crashed like it remembered something, like it was trying to remind the shore of something it had buried long ago.
The wind carried the salt through the open shutters, and Lina couldn't sleep. She felt scraped raw inside. Her thoughts tangled like kelp—impossible to separate, impossible to escape. So she didn't try.
She pulled on a cardigan, shoved her cigarettes into her pocket, and wandered downstairs barefoot. The flagstones were cold underfoot, grounding her in a way nothing else could.
The courtyard was lit by one weak bulb swinging overhead. Milo sat beneath it, a bottle of something dark and unapologetic between his boots. He was smoking, too, the cigarette burning down between long, calloused fingers. He didn't look up when she entered, but there was a second glass already set out.
She sat across from him. No invitation, no small talk.
"I used to think the sea was calming," she said, lighting her cigarette with a slow drag. "Like some kind of lullaby."
Milo reached for the bottle, poured into her glass. "It's not," he said. "It's insistent. The kind of sound that won't let you forget things you want to."
The courtyard smelled of rosemary, old ash, and something damp that never quite dried in the night air. Lina lifted the glass, let the liquid coat her throat. It burned, in a way that felt honest.
They drank in silence for a while. The only sounds were the sea slamming against the rocks and the occasional hiss of burning tobacco.
"Do you believe people can forget things on purpose?" she asked.
He exhaled slowly, watching the smoke drift. "I think memory doesn't really give a damn what we want. It's like the tide. Goes out, comes back, sometimes brings dead things with it."
She gave a faint, humorless laugh. "That's bleak."
"It's honest."
Lina studied him. The way the light kissed the unscarred side of his face, how the other half disappeared into shadow. His profile was sharp, unforgiving—like something chiseled, not grown.
"What did you forget?" she asked.
He didn't answer right away. Instead, he took a long drink, as though he could bury the question in the wine.
"Nothing worth talking about," he said finally.
"That bad?"
"Let's just say it made me prefer the company of old walls and sea air."
Lina flicked her ash toward the cracked tiles. "My fiancé drowned," she said, voice quiet but steady. "In front of our house. Middle of the night. Cold water, winter tide. They found me in the boat. Hypothermic. Disoriented. Blood on my hands. My clothes soaked through."
Milo stilled.
"I don't remember getting in the boat," she continued. "I don't remember what I was doing before the morgue. I only remember the fight. His voice, shouting. And then… a kind of silence that felt like the end of everything."
His voice was rough. "The police ruled it an accident?"
"They said it was consistent with head trauma and fall. Maybe he slipped. But the blood on my clothes… that wasn't from drowning. That was from something else. Something I still can't see."
Milo's glass hovered midair, then lowered.
"What did you fight about?" he asked.
"Everything. Nothing. That night, he said I was a coward. That I'd spent years exploiting my trauma for literary attention. He said I made a living out of bleeding on the page."
"And was he wrong?"
Lina gave a sad little laugh. "He wasn't wrong. Just cruel. He had a way of speaking like a knife. Sharp. Clean. Precise."
"And you loved him?" Milo asked, but his voice held no judgment.
"Some days," she said. "Some days I wanted to drive a stake through his heart."
"Romantic."
"I think love and hate share a bed most nights. People just pretend they sleep on opposite sides."
They sat in silence again, letting the bitterness settle like silt in their drinks. Above them, the sky stretched black and starless, and the wind had teeth.
"Why are you really here?" he asked eventually, eyes still on the sea.
Lina didn't answer right away. She finished her drink, then reached for the bottle again. "Because I thought if I came back—to the place where it happened, where we were happy once—it might give me something. A detail. A flash. Something real."
Milo's expression didn't change, but his voice dropped. "And if the truth is worse than forgetting?"
She looked up sharply. "Do you speak from experience?"
He took a long drag from his cigarette, then stubbed it out with more force than necessary. "I know what it's like to remember something you'd rather keep buried."
"Did you bury someone too?" she asked softly.
His smile was bitter, a twitch more than an expression. "Something like that."
She studied him in the half-light. "You don't strike me as someone who runs from things."
"I don't run," he said. "I just stopped going back."
Lina tilted her head. "But you're still here."
He looked at her then, the full weight of his gaze landing on hers like an anchor.
"Some ghosts," he said, "you learn to live with."
Her throat tightened.
She stood suddenly, needing movement. Needing air. She crossed to the low stone wall at the edge of the courtyard and looked down at the cliffside path. The sea was a churning inkpot below, thrashing like it was trying to cough something up.
Behind her, Milo rose.
"You don't have to be afraid of the truth," he said.
She turned. "I'm not afraid of the truth. I'm afraid it's already in me. That it's just waiting for the right moment to show itself."
"And then what?"
"I don't know."
He stepped closer. Not touching her, but near enough that she could feel the heat of his skin.
"Then I guess you find out," he said. "And deal with it."
Lina looked past him, to the dark horizon where sea met sky in a seamless blur.
"I think someone else is trying to help me remember," she murmured. "The pages. The handwriting. It's like someone's watching me, waiting to see what I'll do next."
Milo's jaw clenched. "Then we watch back."
They stood there, shoulder to shoulder in the quiet. The wind tugged at their clothes, the rosemary bushes whispered secrets.
And somewhere deep in the bones of the inn, the past stirred.