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When I first started writing Professional Enemies, I thought I was writing a story about two stubborn academics who couldn't stand each other.
At the time, I had just finished Saltwater Gravity, a story that asked a great deal of me emotionally. I wanted something lighter. Something fun. Something filled with banter, rivalry, academic debates, unresolved tension, and two people who were entirely too stubborn for their own good.
As it turns out, I was writing about trust. Not only the trust between two people who once loved each other and found their way back to one another, but also the trust we place in ourselves, in our convictions, and in the people who choose to stand beside us when life becomes uncertain.
From the very beginning, I knew where I wanted Phin and Bua to end up. Not every scene, not every chapter, and certainly not every argument. But I knew the future I wanted for them. I wanted them to arrive at a place where they understood themselves better than they had before, where they had learned to trust not only each other, but also their own hearts.
This special chapter is probably the closest thing I have to a love letter to these characters.
One of the things I wanted most for Bua was a future that felt entirely her own. Not one shaped by expectations, pressure, or sacrifice, but by a genuine understanding of what she values and what kind of life makes her happy. The same is true for Phin. Their relationship works because neither of them asks the other to become someone different. They simply choose each other.
Perhaps that's what this story is really about. Not finding a perfect life. Not having everything. Just reaching a point where you can look around at the people you love, the work you care about, and the life you've built, and say: This is enough. This is mine.
One of the themes I wanted to explore throughout this story is the idea that there is no single "correct" version of a happy life. Many of us grow up with a picture of what adulthood is supposed to look like: certain milestones, certain achievements, certain choices. But life rarely follows a neat outline, and happiness doesn't always arrive in the form we expect.
Bua's conversation with Phin about children was especially important to me. Not because there is anything wrong with wanting children, but because there is also nothing wrong with not wanting them. Neither choice is more complete, meaningful, or valid than the other.
What mattered most to me was Phin's response. She doesn't treat Bua's choice as something that needs to be fixed or justified. She simply listens, understands, and trusts her. To me, that is what love looks like: allowing the person you love to be fully themselves, without asking them to become someone else.
In many ways, I think that's why I was never particularly interested in showing their breakup three years before the story began. The breakup mattered, of course, but this story was never really about the moment they fell apart. It was about what came after—the healing, the rebuilding, and the choice to find their way back to each other.
Over the course of this story, Phin and Bua spent a great deal of time arguing. Sometimes about research. Sometimes about archaeology. Sometimes about things that seemed incredibly important in the moment and completely ridiculous in hindsight. But beneath every disagreement was something much simpler: two people trying to understand one another. Two people trying to reconcile the people they used to be with the people they had become.
One of the things that mattered most to me while writing them was allowing them to be imperfect.
Bua was never meant to be the kind of protagonist who always knows the right answer. She is stubborn, cautious, defensive when she is hurt, and often afraid of the very things she wants most.
Phin, despite her confidence, has her own flaws, blind spots, and mistakes. I never wanted either of them to be idealized. I wanted them to make mistakes, disappoint each other, forgive each other, and ultimately choose each other anyway. Because I think that is what relationships often look like in real life. Messy. Complicated. Imperfect. And still worth fighting for.
One thing I've always known about Phin and Bua is that they don't express love in the same way. The advantage of being the one who crafted this story is that I get to see all the parts of these characters, even the ones that never fully make it onto the page. Because of that, I've never really seen their relationship as one person loving more than the other. In my mind, they have always loved each other deeply. They simply carry and express that love differently.
If Phin sometimes appears to love more, I think part of that comes from the fact that she is easier to read. Phin tends to move toward the things she wants. When she loves someone, she expresses it. She reaches out, she speaks up, she shows up. Her feelings are visible, both to the people around her and to the reader.
Bua is almost the opposite.
A great deal of Bua's arc is shaped by fear—fear of vulnerability, fear of disappointment, fear of being hurt again, and fear of needing someone more than she is comfortable admitting. Many of her most important struggles happen internally, which means they are often less visible than Phin's. While Phin's love frequently takes the form of action, Bua's love is often hidden inside difficult choices: allowing herself to trust, allowing herself to stay, allowing herself to lean on someone else when every instinct tells her to pull away.
I also think we naturally notice sacrifice more than fear. Sacrifice is something we can see. Fear is often much quieter. A big part of Bua's journey isn't learning how to love Phin, because she already does. It's learning how to trust again, be vulnerable, and allow herself to be loved without pulling away when things get difficult.
Some of Bua's most significant acts of love are inseparable from her fear. Every time she chooses vulnerability despite wanting to protect herself, every time she chooses trust despite having reasons not to, she is expressing love in her own way.
Of course, if that didn't always come across clearly, that's ultimately on me. As the writer, I carry the full picture in my head while readers only have what I manage to put onto the page. But I've never thought of Phin as loving more or Bua as loving less. I've always seen them as two people who love each other equally, just in very different ways.
This has been a stranger and more rewarding journey than I ever expected. Somewhere along the way, these characters became very dear to me, and I found myself caring about them far more deeply than I anticipated when I first began writing their story.
Now, after living in their world for so long, it feels a little strange to finally say goodbye.
To everyone who spent time with Phin, Bua, and the people around them, thank you. Thank you for reading, for caring about these characters, and for joining me on this journey from beginning to end. And to everyone who left comments along the way, thank you as well. I read every single one. More often than you probably realize, seeing a new comment after a long day became the highlight of it.
And finally, thank you to Phin and Bua.
Thank you for all the arguments, all the stubbornness, all the laughter, all the heartbreak, and all the love.
I think you've earned your happy ending.
*****
Oh, by the way, here's one thing I know happens later in their future.
Bua is the one who will proposes.
Phin has probably been ready for years. Bua simply reaches a point where she looks at their life together, realizes she has spent years arguing with the same woman, loving the same woman, and choosing the same woman, and realizes she has somehow built an entire future around Phin, which feels like the sort of thing that should probably come with a proposal. So she asks Phin to be her wife.
After several minutes of Phin crying and Bua pretending not to panic, the answer is yes.