The restaurant is small enough that we're the only reservation, and the owner greets Zachary with the kind of familiarity that only comes from repeat visits.
"Zachary." The man is older, weathered in the way people who live near the ocean get weathered, and his smile is genuine. "Good to see you again."
"Marco." Zachary shakes his hand warmly. "Thanks for making room for us."
"For you? Always." Marco's eyes shift to me, kind and assessing. "And you brought someone special this time."
The observation lands somewhere vulnerable in my chest, and I feel Zachary's hand find the small of my back.
"Very special," he says, and the certainty in his voice undoes me.
Marco leads us to a corner table with windows overlooking the harbor, and I realize with startling clarity that Zachary brought me somewhere real instead of impressive. Somewhere that matters to him instead of somewhere designed to impress me.
"The menu is whatever Marco feels like cooking tonight." Zachary pulls out my chair before I can do it myself. "He doesn't take requests."
"Good." I sit down, watching Marco disappear into the kitchen. "I'm terrible at making decisions anyway."
"You're excellent at making decisions." Zachary settles across from me. "You just second-guess yourself after."
The accuracy should feel exposing, but instead it feels like being seen.
The food arrives in waves—simple and perfect. Fresh fish that tastes like the ocean we just walked beside. Vegetables roasted with herbs I don't recognize but want to memorize. Bread so warm I burn my fingers tearing into it.
I'm halfway through my meal when I realize I'm not performing anything.
Not my sophistication. Not my boredom. Not my immunity to sentiment or my careful distance from things that could hurt me.
I'm just existing beside him, and it's terrifying how much that feels like enough.
"You're doing it again." Zachary's voice pulls me back.
"What?" I take a sip of wine, studying him over the rim.
"Looking surprised." His eyes hold mine. "Like you keep expecting this to be something other than what it is."
"Maybe I am." The admission comes easier than it should. "Wonderful people don't exist in my experience. And the ones who pretend to be always want something I'm not prepared to give."
His expression shifts—something soft and wounded at the same time.
"What if I just want you?" He reaches across the table, his fingers brushing mine. "Exactly as you are. Without expecting you to be anything else."
The statement lands like a promise I don't know how to hold yet.
After dinner he takes me to the marina where a small sailboat waits, bobbing gently against the dock like it's been expecting us.
"You sail?" I stare at the vessel, trying to reconcile corporate Zachary with nautical adventures.
"Not really." He helps me onto the dock with careful hands. "I don't actually know how to sail properly. But the owner owed me a favor, and I wanted to give you something you'd remember."
The honesty undoes me completely.
"You arranged a sailboat you can't sail?" I can't help laughing. "That's either romantic or reckless."
"Both." His smile is self-aware and devastating. "We'll motor out. The sunset should be starting soon."
He helps me aboard with the kind of care that makes my chest ache, and minutes later we're motoring into the harbor as the sun starts its descent. The sky does that impossible thing where it looks like someone spilled paint across the horizon—oranges bleeding into pinks bleeding into purples that shouldn't exist in nature but somehow do.
I'm standing at the bow watching color transform everything when the question escapes before I can stop it.
"Why are you doing this?" My voice comes out smaller than intended. "Why are you being so wonderful when wonderful people don't exist?"
I hear him move closer, feel the warmth of his body at my back before his arms wrap around my waist.
"I've missed you all week." His voice is rough against my ear. "Missed you even though we work together."
My heart hammers against my ribs, and I can't breathe properly.
"Zachary—" His name comes out strangled.
"I'm in love with you." The confession detonates in the space between us. "Have been since before I had permission to be. I think even since you flirted with me at the ranch and I pretended not to be interested. I was interested."
I turn in his arms, staring at him in the fading light.
Love was supposed to be the thing that came later. After we figured out logistics and age gaps and whether this could survive past the three weeks until school starts. After we'd proven we could handle the complications without drowning in them.
Instead it's here now, undeniable and impossible.
"You can't—" I stop, start again. "We have three weeks. You can't be in love with me when there's a countdown timer on this entire thing."
"I know." His hands frame my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones. "Doesn't change the truth."
"I don't know how to do this." The words scrape out raw, terrified. "How to hold something this fragile without breaking it. How to want you this much without destroying us both."
"Neither do I." He kisses my forehead, gentle and devastating. "But I'm done pretending I don't feel it. Done hiding behind all the rational reasons this is impossible."
The sunset paints his face in impossible colors, and I realize with cold clarity that I'm completely undone.
That whatever careful distance I was maintaining just evaporated the moment he said those three words out loud. That I'm standing on a sailboat in a harbor I've never been to before, being loved by someone who sees every messy complicated truth about me and chooses me anyway.
"Say something." His voice carries a vulnerability I've never heard before. "Please."
"I'm terrified." The admission comes out honest and shaking. "Of how much I want this. Of how badly it's going to hurt when it ends."
"Then we don't let it end." His certainty sounds like faith. I don't know how to believe it yet. "We figure out the impossible. Together."
The sky keeps transforming around us, and I stand in his arms not knowing how to promise him forever when we can barely promise each other three more weeks.
But I kiss him anyway, tasting salt air and hope and the devastating possibility that maybe some risks are worth taking even when you can see the ending coming.
Even when holding something this precious feels like learning to carry fire in your bare hands.