Chapter four:The weight of coming back
She hadn’t slept.
Edgewater had always been too quiet at night—no sirens, no city hum, no neighbors stomping around above her. Just wind through trees and the occasional sound of a dog barking far off down the road. Most people found it peaceful.
Eva found it unbearable.
Sleep refused to come, not because of the bed, or the silence, or even the dreams. It was the weight of memory. The kind that settled into her chest like a brick and didn’t move, even when she turned onto her side and pulled the blanket over her head.
She kept thinking about Rachel’s message. About how fast a ghost becomes flesh the moment someone says your name out loud.
Now people knew she was back.
Which meant he probably knew too.
And that changed everything.
She stared at the ceiling until the room turned from dark blue to pale gray, then gave up and dragged herself into the small kitchen of the rental house. The kettle whistled like it had something urgent to say, and she poured the tea with shaking hands, telling herself it was just exhaustion.
Not fear.
She sipped slowly, watching the steam curl into the air. Her phone sat on the counter beside her, untouched since the night before. No new messages. No missed calls.
Noah hadn’t reached out.
And that was good, right?
That meant she still had time. Space. A little bit of distance before she had to face the version of him that had existed only in memory until now.
She got dressed in silence. Jeans. A soft sweater. No makeup. No armor. She didn’t want to be recognized, even though she already had been. The town wasn’t big enough to disappear in—not really.
Still, she needed to get out of the house. Away from her own thoughts. She couldn’t spend another day pacing between rooms pretending she wasn’t waiting for something to happen.
She walked.
Down Main Street. Past the diner with the cracked neon sign. Past the library where she used to volunteer in the summers. She kept her head down, her steps steady, her eyes forward.
Then she stopped in front of the bookstore.
Again.
Hayes Books & Vinyl sat quietly, tucked between a candle shop and a barber’s. The windows were clean. The door propped slightly open. Music filtered out—something old and jazzy, slow and smooth.
Her heart stalled.
It was open.
He was probably inside.
This was the moment she had avoided for days. The one she’d rehearsed a thousand different ways.
She stepped forward.
And then the door creaked.
Eva froze.
A customer stepped out—an older man with silver hair and a weathered leather bag. He gave her a polite nod, not recognizing her, and continued down the sidewalk.
She stood still. Just outside the threshold. So close she could smell the familiar scent of paper and pinewood oil drifting through the door.
She could hear footsteps inside.
Could feel them.
And she panicked.
Her feet moved without permission, turning her sharply away. She crossed the street, ducked behind a parked van, and kept walking.
Coward.
The word echoed in her chest louder than the bell on that door would have.
But she wasn’t ready. Not to see him. Not to see his eyes and find resentment. Or worse—indifference.
Not yet.
Instead, she walked toward the cliffs again.
Back to the place where she used to dream about leaving. Back to where she had stood at seventeen, daring herself to imagine something bigger than Edgewater and heartbreak and small-town forever.
She stood there now, older, not braver. And for the first time since coming home, she let herself say it out loud:
“I’m sorry.”
The wind took the words quickly. The ocean didn’t answer. But she said them anyway.
To the sky.
To the memory of him.
To the girl she used to be.
And maybe—if he was listening somehow—to Noah too.