He retreats, but he knows he doesn't really want to stay away. If anything, the offer had been far too tempting, too much the physical culmination of all the desires he'd felt building within him for all these weeks. But at the same time, there's a part of him that's reluctant, afraid of what it would mean for things to change so seemingly irrevocably.

There's a spot just off the pathway that overlooks the water, one that the two of them often passed on their morning walks, with a few pine trees lined up along the edge of the cliff, their branches hanging above the waves. Josh settles on one of the rocks, looking out at the horizon, his knees drawn up to his chest. When he hears Alecto's voice - still calm and composed - he hesitates a moment before he calls back, carried by the wind: "I'm here."