CHAPTER 3: Names and Scars
915 Words
The next few days unfolded quietly.
Leigh fell into a rhythm she didn’t realize she craved. Mornings were slow—a cup of bitter coffee on the windowsill, the radio from the bookstore murmuring through the floorboards, and a quiet ache that never fully left her chest. She didn’t do much. Walked when the weather allowed. Read when her thoughts weren’t too loud. Breathed, mostly. That was enough.
And sometimes, more often than not, she found herself sitting at The Stillwater Café.
Always near the window. Always around the same time.
She never planned to run into him. But somehow, Callum was always there before her.
Sometimes he read. Sometimes he stared out the window. Once, she caught him sketching in the margins of a napkin with the tip of a black pen—sharp lines, jagged strokes, like he was trying to draw the inside of his mind.
They didn’t always talk. But when they did, it felt like something real.
It was quiet, careful conversation.
Like two people walking barefoot over broken glass.
“Leigh,” he said one day, the way someone might test the sound of a song title.
She glanced up from her coffee. “Yeah?”
Callum looked like he hadn’t meant to say her name out loud. Like it had slipped.
“You always look like you’re thinking about leaving,” he said.
She blinked. “I… what?”
“You sit near the door. You keep your bag zipped. You glance at the exit every few minutes.”
She was stunned silent.
He leaned back slightly. “It’s not a judgment. Just an observation.”
Leigh looked down at her cup. The swirl of foam had already faded.
“I guess I never unpacked that habit,” she whispered. “When things got bad… it was safer to leave before they could hurt me.”
He didn’t reply immediately.
Then, “You don’t have to tell me what happened.”
“I know.”
“But if you ever do…” His voice softened. “I’m not afraid of broken.”
Her heart thudded.
That word. Broken. It had followed her here. Lingered in her thoughts like a ghost. She didn’t wear it proudly—but she wore it truthfully.
And now someone else said it like it wasn’t something shameful.
Leigh swallowed. “That’s a dangerous thing to admit to a stranger.”
Callum held her gaze. “You don’t feel like a stranger.”
Later that evening, Leigh sat in her apartment with a blank journal page in front of her.
She stared at it for an hour.
Then, she wrote:
"His eyes don’t ask for anything. But somehow, they still make me want to give something back."
She tore out the page.
Folded it twice.
Then she stared at it until it meant nothing and everything at once.
Meanwhile, across town, Callum sat on the roof of his house with a beer in one hand and Murphy’s head resting against his thigh. The dog snored lightly, unaware of the thoughts his owner was losing himself in.
Callum hadn’t expected this.
Hadn’t expected her.
He was good at keeping people at a distance. Too good. Ever since… No. He didn’t think about that. He didn’t let himself think about that.
But Leigh Morgan had a silence that matched his own.
And he couldn’t ignore that.
He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a worn leather sketchbook, and flipped through it until he reached a clean page.
Then, with slow, careful strokes, he drew her eyes.
He didn’t even realize he remembered them that well.
The next day was colder. Sharp wind. Gray skies. A storm waiting behind the clouds.
Still, she came to the café.
Still, he was there.
But this time, she didn’t sit across the room.
She walked straight to his table.
And he didn’t pretend not to wait for her.
“Do you ever have those days,” she asked, wrapping her hands around her mug, “where everything hurts but you don’t know why?”
Callum didn’t hesitate. “All the time.”
Leigh looked up at him slowly. “What do you do when that happens?”
“I keep moving.”
“That simple?”
“No,” he said. “It’s never simple. But it’s what I’ve got.”
She nodded, eyes tracing the veins on the back of his hand.
Then she whispered, “Can I ask you something?”
Callum raised a brow. “Yeah.”
“Why do you always wear long sleeves?”
He stilled. Just for a second.
Then, carefully, he pushed his sleeve up.
Just a little.
There was a scar. Thin. Pale. Deep enough to speak of something long ago and still sharp.
Leigh didn’t gasp. Didn’t cry.
She just nodded. “Me too.”
And this time, she pushed up her own sleeve. Slowly.
A scar on her inner forearm. Faint. Like it had faded with time, but never disappeared.
They looked at each other.
And for the first time since they met, there was no pretending. No guarded eyes. No safe distance.
Just two truths laid bare.
Just two broken things, daring to breathe in the same space.
Callum leaned forward. Voice low. “What happened to you?”
She met his gaze. “Everything.”
He nodded once. “Me too.”
And then, they sat in silence.
Not the kind that aches. The kind that heals.
- Writer
