The first thing Elena noticed about him—truly noticed—was the way he didn't move.
Three mornings in a row, she caught sight of him on the dock behind her cottage. Same position. Same stillness. Like the sea had carved him from its own loneliness and left him there to weather.
Elena sipped her coffee and squinted through the salt-splattered window. His silhouette was sharp against the misty morning—broad-shouldered, hands in his pockets, head tilted to the horizon.
He never turned around.
On the fourth day, she walked down the rocky path with bare feet and a cautious heart.
"Nice view," she said, stopping just short of the dock.
The man didn't respond.
Elena tucked her windblown hair behind her ear. "I'm Elena. I just moved into the Hartley cottage."
A pause. Then a quiet voice—deep and steady.
"I know."
She blinked. "Oh?"
"I used to fish off this dock when I was a kid. That house belonged to your grandmother."
Elena stepped forward slowly. "You knew her?"
"She made the best blackberry tarts on the coast." He turned, finally, and looked at her. His eyes were sky-colored—icy blue, yet strangely warm. "I'm Rowan."
Their eyes held for a beat too long. Then he nodded once, polite but distant, and turned back toward the sea.
"I didn't know anyone still came down here," Elena said, folding her arms against the wind. "Thought I'd be alone."
"You are."
She almost smiled. "So you're a ghost then?"
He gave her a half-smirk, the first crack in his armor. "Something like that."
That night, as the wind howled against the windowpanes and the old cottage creaked with age, Elena lay awake thinking about a man who watched the sea like it might whisper back.
She didn't know yet that he was guarding something.
And that her arrival would stir it from its slumber.