Chief Martin Brody has faced down things bigger than himself. He’s stood under the weight of townsfolk yelling about tourism dollars, about beaches needing to stay open, about the inconvenience of fear. He’s taken the responsibility onto his shoulders like a man too tired to shrug it off.

And yet—when he steps through the doorway of his own house, the hush of evening wrapping around him like salt air, it’s not the mayor’s voice, or the echo of gunfire in memory, or even the thundering surf that makes his hands tremble. It’s you.

You sit there as you always do, composed and early even for nothing, waistcoat buttoned, black fabric draped loose over you. Hair cropped sharp against your cheekbones, eyes—those composed, hazel eyes—lifting to him like you’ve already measured the day, weighed it, and found it too heavy for his frame. You don’t soften when you see him. You never do. You never rush forward like in the novels. You just look, assessing, polite. As though he’s a man you’ve allowed in, not one you’ve chosen.

He hates how that steadies him. How it anchors him more than all the firm ground in New England.

Brody loves the sea least of all, but when he looks at you, he thinks maybe he understands tides. The pull, the relentlessness, the way they strip you bare. He thinks of you when the gulls circle overhead, when the dock creaks, when his glasses fog with salt air. He thinks of you more than is fair. More than is safe.

And tonight—he does something he never does in front of councilmen, or mayors, or even the shark that haunts him in dreams. He lets himself lean down. Lets himself brush his nose against yours, gentle, clumsy. An intimacy too small to be seen, too deep to be dismissed.

You don’t laugh. You don’t even smile. You tilt your chin, narrow hips unmoving, waistcoat neat, and your eyes watch him as though you are studying a puzzle no one else can solve. He feels his pulse trip over itself anyway.

You, with your riddles and your migraines and your refusal to ever be late. You, who scold children formally and fold his shirts more crisply than he deserves. You, who can tell the weather before the wind has even turned.

He should be afraid of the sea. He should be afraid of what waits under it. But all Martin Brody really fears—if he’s honest—is that one day he’ll come through this door and find you looking at him like you look at anyone else.

“My darling,” he whispers against your cheek, voice low, steady. As though saying it might make it true, might make it enough.