Chapter 4 Collision

POV Scarlett:

“I came to end it,” I say, cutting through the memory. “And I will.”

“With us?” Asher asks. “Or with them?”

Asher has always known how to separate things. That’s how he cares: he arranges, organizes, removes the excess.

I pull the shawl tighter. The breeze assures me I won’t faint.

“With everything.”

The word drifts between us until it drowns in the noise of the water. I decide it’s time. If I stay, I yield. If I yield, everything breaks in ways I’ll never be able to mend.

I take three steps toward the trail. Cole speaks, voice lower than I expected.

“If any of them hurt you, I—”

“No,” I cut him off. “No one hurt me. I made the choice.”

“Chose what?” Logan. There’s anger in him, but a sad anger, almost childish.

“I chose to end it before someone ends me.”

I think that’s both truth and lie, like almost everything between us.

I think that if I ever truly leave, I’ll take with me the places where we were happy. The wooden bridge that groaned under our weight. The flat stone where I lay to watch clouds and ended up seeing hands. The pine trunk carved with a pocketknife—a crooked drawing only we understand.

“I won’t ask you to stay,” Logan says, and that’s his way of asking. “But I won’t pretend I don’t want you to.”

“I know.”

Asher takes a deep breath, like diving into a lake that hurts. He steps close enough that I can feel his skin. My body leans forward out of habit, and I pull it back by choice.

“Let me walk you home,” Asher says.

I shake my head. “If you walk me home, I’ll stay.”

No one speaks for what feels like a month. The boys take a few steps back, out of modesty—the same modesty we never had before desire. It’s a kind of delicacy that breaks me apart inside.

“We’ll see each other around,” Dylan says, giving me a crooked half-smile. He used to be more insolent. Today, he’s just tired.

“If you need anything…” Dylan doesn’t finish. He always finishes sentences carefully, but today he finds no words.

“I know,” I repeat, for the last time.

Cole watches me. I can’t read what he’s thinking, and that’s a strange kind of relief. If I could, maybe I’d stay. And I can’t.

I turn back toward the trail. Asher speaks, but not with words. He holds my shawl by one corner and returns it, with the tenderness of a goodbye between two joined hands. My hands stay in his a second too long. It’s enough to ignite memories: the heat traveling up my arm, my chest opening, the world shrinking until it fits inside the distance of a touch.

I go.

I walk down the trail as if treading on glass. Behind me, footsteps. Not theirs—mine. The sound of my own departure. At every turn, a memory pulls at me, and I let it pass through like a cold wind.

...

The town greets me with eyes I still don’t know if they’ve seen me. I walk along the main street, head low, shawl around my throat. The grocer’s wife rearranges apples while following me with her peripheral vision. The pastor drives by in a black car that used to be newer and doesn’t see me. Or pretends not to.

At home, the fireplace has gone out. The ashes sleep at the bottom, begging for a spark. I wash my hands like someone scrubbing off a mark that doesn’t exist. My mother is lying down; I hear her breathing. My father isn’t here. I sit at the table and wait for courage to return from the stones of the waterfall.

I take paper, pen. Write and tear three times. On the fourth, I accept the crooked handwriting and the short sentence:

“It’s done.”

I leave it on the sideboard, like a message left for a ghost. Go upstairs. Take off the shawl. The mirror returns a woman with the eyes of someone who walked into the sea in winter.

I remember Cole saying my name too softly for the world to hear. His whisper carried a gravity that took the ground from under my feet; his firm fingers guided my steps as if there were music. When he brought his mouth close to my ear, I forgot every argument, and my body followed. It was control, yes, but borrowed—I gave it back whenever I wanted, and he, even without saying, knew.

Dylan is the memory that comes quietly. His embrace put me back together inside, and when the kiss came, it was long, patient, until tenderness turned into slow fever. I fit entirely into what he offered me.

I sit on the bed and let the memories spin until they tire themselves out. I won’t cry for them today. Today, I wait for the second part of the punishment: living with my own decision.

...

The next morning, I wake before the light. I work with my hands so I don’t have to think with my head: sweep, cook, wash. When the morning stands high, I leave to take milk to the neighbor’s house. On the way, I pass a section of fence my father repaired yesterday. The knot is firm. He always ties firm knots.

I return through the back trail, where no one usually goes. The air smells of resin and crushed grass. I hear footsteps. Not mine. I stop. Asher appears out of nowhere, like light when the clouds decide to open.

“I said I wasn’t coming,” I say, before the question spills.

“I know.” He raises his hands, surrendering. “But I needed to see you. Just for a minute.”

I look around. No one passes here. Even so, guilt has omnipresent eyes.

“One minute.”

He steps close enough that I can feel his breath. He doesn’t touch me. His gentleness undoes me. I want to ask for an embrace and for exile at the same time.

“I didn’t come to argue,” he says. “I came to give you this.”

He hands me a folded handkerchief. White. Simple. I unfold it. There’s a letter embroidered in the corner: S.

I fall silent.

“It’s…” He shrugs. “One of those things we do when we don’t know what else to do.”

I smile. Small, but real. The minute is ending. He notices. We come closer with the naturalness of those who know the way. The kiss that is born there is restrained in gesture, impure in intensity: soft mouth, short breath, hands that don’t know where to stay. I break it before my body betrays me. I rest my forehead against his, stealing courage from the silence.

“Goodbye,” I say.

“See you,” he corrects, out of stubbornness more than hope.

When he leaves, I tuck the handkerchief inside my shawl. I walk slowly, like someone carrying thin glass. The handkerchief weighs like gold. Love weighs more.