Their second morning at the cottage began slowly.
Sunlight filtered through gauzy curtains, casting soft stripes of gold across the wooden floor. The sea breeze drifted through a cracked window, cool and salty. Somewhere in the distance, gulls cried, calling the day awake.
Aki opened her eyes to find Evan already awake, his arm slung behind his head, watching her.
“What?” she mumbled, blinking the sleep away.
He smiled. “You snore. Just a little. Like a sleepy fox.”
“I do not,” she said, groggy and indignant.
“You do. It’s adorable.”
She groaned and pulled the blanket over her head. “Why did I agree to fall in love with someone who documents all my flaws?”
He laughed and tugged the blanket down to kiss her forehead. “Because you’re brave.”
Aki smiled against his chest. “Or foolish.”
“Or both.”
After a slow breakfast of toast and jam and more of Evan’s tragic coffee, they took a walk along the cliffs.
This time, Aki brought her sketchbook. She sat on a smooth rock near the edge, drawing the curve of the waves, the tiny silhouette of their cottage behind them.
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Evan wandered nearby with his camera, but she felt his presence even when he was silent — always close, always steady.
When he finally returned to her side, she closed her sketchbook and held it tightly in her lap.
He raised an eyebrow. “Can I see?”
She hesitated. “Not this page.”
He didn’t press, just leaned back on his elbows beside her, watching the clouds drift by.
“I wrote something,” Aki said suddenly.
Evan looked over at her.
“A while ago. Before I came here. I didn’t think I’d show it to you.”
She opened her sketchbook, flipping past drawings until she found a folded piece of paper, tucked carefully between pages.
A letter.
Her handwriting in black ink. The paper slightly worn from being opened and reread more times than she could count.
She handed it to him.
His fingers brushed hers as he took it, and for a moment, neither of them breathed.
Then he unfolded it and read.
Dear Evan,
I don’t know what this is yet.
I know how it feels — like light breaking through clouds, like being seen for the first time. Like home and chaos and something fragile I don’t want to ruin.
But I don’t know what it becomes.
Maybe it ends. Maybe it breaks.
Maybe the distance pulls us apart before we figure out how to keep holding on.
But if that happens, I want you to know — you changed something in me.
You made me brave enough to leave the city I thought I’d never leave. You made me want to risk something real.
So even if this doesn’t last forever… I will never regret you.
Not one second.
— Aki
Evan read it once. Then again.
When he finally looked up, Aki’s face was flushed, her fingers twisted in her coat sleeve.
“I wrote it on the plane,” she said, voice small. “I thought… if things didn’t go well, I’d never show you. But now…”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
He reached for her hand, holding it with such care it made her chest ache.
“Do you want to know what I think?” he asked.
She nodded.
He folded the letter slowly and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
“I think I’m going to keep this,” he said, “and show it to you again someday — maybe when we’re arguing over dishes, or planning which city to raise our cat in, or sitting on a porch somewhere with grey hair and bad knees.”
Aki laughed through a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
“You think we’ll have a porch and a cat?”
“I think,” Evan said, brushing a strand of wind-tangled hair from her face, “that I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
She leaned into him then, resting her head on his shoulder as the sea roared softly below.
The letter had been written in uncertainty — in the liminal space between hope and fear.
But now, here on this windblown cliff with the man who had shown her that love didn’t have to be perfect to be real — it felt like something else.
Not an ending.
Not a goodbye.
A beginning.
