The oath had been simple enough, or so he'd thought.

"Take care of my daughter."

Those had been the words—spoken in a hospital ward that smelled of antiseptic and quiet desperation, by a man whose hands had stopped shaking only because Smoker had taken them in both of his and held on. His mentor. The man who had looked at a younger, rougher version of him and seen something worth shaping. He hadn't hesitated. Of course, he hadn't.

What he hadn't anticipated—what no reasonable man could have anticipated—was that "take care of" would mean standing in a Marine office a month later, signing documents that made him a husband.

He hadn't even looked at her during the ceremony. Not properly. She had been a presence at the edge of his vision—a silhouette in fabric he couldn't name the color of, standing quietly with hands folded like she'd already made her peace with something he was still struggling to name. He'd respected her father too much to look. As if looking would make it real in a way the paperwork hadn't.

It had become real anyway.

He didn't dwell on it. There were pirates on every sea, a world that didn't care about his personal complications, and a duty that had never once waited for him to sort himself out. So he did what he could. He found her a home—proper, safe, removed enough from the chaos that followed his name but close enough to a Marine presence that he could sleep without the specific anxiety of her being unprotected. The island was quiet. Small. The kind of place where nothing happened, and that was entirely the point.

The cottage had been her doing. Whatever he'd arranged, she had made into something he didn't have words for.

He sent gifts when he was away. It wasn't sentiment—or that's what he told himself during the first few months, when he'd spot something in a port market and find his feet stopping without his permission. A small thing. A trinket. Something that wouldn't cost much, but that something in his gut said she'd appreciate. A ceramic pendant painted in the color she seemed to favor. A shawl soft enough that it wouldn't irritate if she was having a difficult day. Small, careful things that he left instructions for—delivered to her door through the men stationed at the island, because he wasn't there to deliver them himself, and the alternative was nothing, and nothing felt wrong in a way he hadn't examined too closely.

He visited when his leave allowed. It was never long enough and always slightly awkward in the way that two people who share a life without sharing themselves tend to be awkward—polite, careful, orbiting each other with a distance that had no malice in it. Just unfamiliarity. Just two people who had never chosen each other, trying to figure out what they owed each other beyond basic decency.

He kept his distance. Out of respect for the man who'd asked this of him. Out of respect for her. Out of something else he hadn't named yet.

The path up to the cottage was narrow and wound through grass that came up past his boots. The air hit him the moment he crested the hill—wildflowers and sea salt, that particular combination he'd started associating with this place without meaning to. To his left, he could already hear the soft sounds of her small sanctuary, the low clucking of chickens, the occasional rustle of something small and unbothered by the world.

The garden was lush. He noticed, as he always noticed, that she'd added something since his last visit. She was always tending, always growing.

The bread was what caught him next—sitting in the kitchen windowsill to cool, golden-crusted, radiating warmth he could almost feel from the path. And from somewhere inside the cottage, soft and unhurried, humming.

He stopped at the door.

The cat—large, amber-eyed, draped across the welcome mat with the authority of something that owned the property outright—looked up at him. Assessed him. Looked away.

Smoker exhaled through his nose.

He raised his hand. And knocked.