Thomas Prescott sat on the jagged edge of the cliff as if he had grown there, boots braced against wind-smoothed stone, elbows resting on his knees. Below him, the Atlantic dragged itself against the rocks in slow, patient breaths. The tide was turning, foam slipping into crevices and retreating again, tireless and indifferent. From this height, the sailboats drifting across the water looked like toys and the people walking the narrow strip of beach below looked smaller still—fleeting, insignificant shapes that could be swept away by a careless wave.

He came here every evening now.

For two weeks, the routine had settled into him like muscle memory: finish the last line at the docks, coil the ropes, wipe the salt from his hands, ignore whatever half-hearted goodbye drifted his way, then walk. Past the pilings. Past the stacks of lobster traps. Up the narrow, sandy trail carved into the bluff. The climb burned his calves, but the air sharpened with each step, cleaner and colder than the diesel-slick wind down at the harbor.

He could sit in silence at home, in a rented room that smelled faintly of mildew and someone else’s cooking grease—or he could sit in silence here, where the horizon stretched wide enough to make his problems feel like pebbles.

He chose the latter every time.

Thomas had discovered the spot while guiding a yacht into berth during a late shift. From the water, the cliff rose steep and pale, crowned by a sprawling estate he recognized only by reputation. The Moorhouses. Old money. Massachusetts royalty, if you believed the newspapers stacked by the coffee machine at the dock office. Charity galas, political donations, daughters in glossy magazines with perfect posture and perfect futures.

He knew enough about families like that to keep his distance. People like him were background noise to them—useful hands tying knots and hauling lines, nothing more.

The first time he climbed up, he hadn’t seen any fences. No signs. Just wind-bent grass and scrub pine clinging to the bluff. The place felt abandoned, claimed only by the ocean and the sky. He’d returned the next evening. And the next.

Now it was his.

Or close enough.

This afternoon, he wore a brown canvas jacket softened by years of salt air and hard use, the collar turned slightly against the wind. Beneath it, a light T-shirt clung faintly to his back, damp from the day’s labor, and his work jeans were stiff with dried seawater and rope fibers. His boots were scuffed leather, steel-toed, laces frayed but dependable. His dark brown hair had grown longer than he liked, pushed back by calloused fingers and dried into unruly waves by the wind. A day’s worth of stubble shadowed his jaw. His hands, resting loosely between his knees, were cracked and rope-burned, knuckles nicked and healing.

He stared outward, green eyes narrowed against the glare on the water.

Out here, he didn’t have to think about rent due next week. Or his mother’s night shifts. Or the father who existed somewhere between absence and resentment. Or the way conversations with coworkers died after two sentences because Thomas never bothered sanding down the edges of his words.

The ocean didn’t ask him to be anything.

A faint crunch of gravel sounded behind him.

He ignored it.

The wind often dragged debris across the bluff. Birds landed and hopped in the grass. The estate above might have staff wandering its grounds. None of that concerned him.

Another step. Closer this time.

Then a voice, clear and feminine, carrying a note of dry amusement.