Chapter 5 The Blind Spot

POV Scarlett:

In the afternoon, I run into Logan near his family’s barn, by chance—or maybe not. He measures me with the practical eyes of someone who makes lists. He’s angry. Anger looks good on him, and that realization shames me.

“You could’ve said anything,” Logan complains. “Anything but that you lied.”

“I had to.”

“Had to hurt?”

“Had to close.”

He clenches his jaw. Almost says something that would ruin everything—but doesn’t. Instead, he points with his chin toward the horizon.

“It’s going to rain.”

“I know.”

We stand side by side for a few scratching seconds. If we stay longer, we’ll reopen a chapter I don’t have the strength to reread. I leave. He doesn’t call after me. But for an instant, his palm rests on the wood—and I remember my body pressed there, my name leaving his voice, low and rough, almost a warning. That memory alone makes me walk faster.

...

Dylan bumps into me on the church porch two days later. He’s carrying boxes. Sweat clings his shirt to his chest. He sees me, and kindness lights up.

“Need help with anything?” I ask, out of habit.

“Nothing you can carry now,” he answers, and we both know he means something else.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

I almost hug him. Almost. Instead, I shift a box into its proper place. Our care greets itself, and each of us walks away. His clean scent stays with me longer than it should.

Cole is the only one I don’t look for and who doesn’t look for me. Still, I find him at the market, in the tool aisle. He picks up a steel ruler, tests it, puts it back, picks another. Sees me in the glass reflection and pretends not to. When he passes beside me, he says without looking:

“If anyone says your name too loud, let me know.”

“No need.”

“Yes, there is.”

I want to ask “why?”, but I already know the answer. So I don’t. He walks away. I stay, holding a hammer, weighing the things I can’t fix. And I remember his quiet voice against my ear, the commanding whisper that gave me chills, the firm fingers adjusting my steps as if teaching me a secret. With Cole, even silence felt like an order—and I liked to obey.

...

I return to the waterfall on Sunday, alone. The water still falls the same way, as if nothing had changed. Everything has. I sit on the largest rock and let the memories touch me politely. They have tact: a kiss returning in waves, a touch gliding over skin and staying, a name spoken too softly to be condemned. My body responds—not from habit, but from memory. I warm from within, as if someone had lit a good ember in the center of my chest and blown gently.

I breathe until it hurts less. I pray something without a name to a saint I don’t know. I ask for strength to endure the week. I ask for silence from the town. I ask for protection for them. For Asher, more than anyone.

“I love you,” I confess to the water—and the water doesn’t tell.

I stay until the sun resigns behind the trees. When I rise, I feel that the choice, however painful, is mine to bear. I carry the ache in the same place where hope lives. One day, maybe, it will weigh less.

I walk back slowly, letting the night drape over me like a shawl. At the edge of the trail, a white handkerchief tangled on a bush branch. Mine. I pick it up. Hold it tight in my fist. The embroidered “S” brushes my skin like a tiny secret.

“See you,” I say, alone, repeating Asher’s stubbornness.

I still don’t know what will come next. I only know that, for now, this is what I can give: distance to protect them, and a love kept in silence—too vast to fit in the town, too vast to fit in me, but contained enough not to destroy us.

I walk home. The sound of the water follows me halfway.

Then it’s only the night breathing.

And me, breathing with it.