CHAPTER 4: Things Unsaid
802 Words
The weather turned colder the following week. Not winter, not yet. But the air bit a little harder in the mornings, and the sky forgot how to be blue. Leigh found herself wearing the same oversized sweater three days in a row, not because she didn’t have anything else to wear—but because it felt like armor. Soft. Familiar. Safe.
She hadn’t spoken to anyone except Callum in days.
And strangely, that didn’t scare her.
It comforted her.
Because the thing with Callum was… he didn’t ask for more than she could give.
He never pried. Never pushed. Never made her feel like she needed to be more. And maybe that was why her chest felt lighter when she sat across from him, even if they barely spoke. Their silences weren’t awkward. They were mutual agreements—we don’t have to pretend here.
She liked that.
Even if it scared the hell out of her.
On Tuesday, they sat at the café as usual.
He sketched. She wrote.
Or, more accurately, she tried to write.
But the words wouldn’t come.
Her pen hovered over the page, waiting for her to be brave enough to open the door inside her head. But every time she tried, the memories crowded too close. Faces she’d left behind. Words she never got to say. Regret, sticky and sharp, clinging to her ribs.
Callum looked up.
“You okay?”
She nodded, too quickly. “Yeah. Just… stuck.”
“Writer’s block?”
“More like life block.”
He chuckled. Soft, rare.
Leigh looked up. “You laugh like you’re not used to it.”
“I’m not.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
She didn’t push.
Because she understood.
There are some things people only say when the room is dark, and no one is looking them in the eye.
Later, as they stepped outside into the sharp air, their shoulders brushed.
Neither moved away.
They didn’t say goodbye.
Didn’t say “see you tomorrow.”
But they knew.
They would.
That night, Leigh sat on the floor of her apartment, the photo of her sister in her hands.
She traced the smile frozen in the picture.
“You’d tell me I’m being stupid,” she whispered. “You’d tell me to run. Or fall. But not sit in the middle of nowhere, scared of my own damn heart.”
She closed her eyes.
And for the first time since arriving in Havenbrook, she let herself cry.
Not the quiet kind.
The loud, shaking kind.
The kind you can only do alone.
Across town, Callum was sitting on the hood of his truck, parked in the middle of nowhere. A cigarette dangled from his lips, unlit. He hadn’t smoked in three years—but sometimes he still held one, like a promise he hadn’t broken yet.
He thought about Leigh.
About the scar on her wrist.
About the silence in her eyes.
And about the way she made the air feel different just by breathing near him.
He didn’t want to want her.
Because Callum knew what he was. What he carried. What he broke.
But the truth was there, even if he never said it aloud.
She made him feel... almost human again.
The next morning, it rained.
Of course it did.
Leigh walked into the café with soaked boots and frizzy hair, and Callum was already there.
Their eyes met.
She hesitated.
Then walked over.
“Morning,” she said, setting her coffee down.
“Rough night?”
She gave a half-smile. “Cried for the first time in months. So yeah.”
He nodded. No jokes. No pity.
Then, after a long moment, he said, “Sometimes crying means you’re still alive.”
“Yeah,” she said, staring at her fingers. “But sometimes it just means you still remember.”
He looked away.
“Leigh.”
She looked up.
His voice was careful. “You don’t have to tell me what happened. But if you ever want to… I’ll listen.”
Her chest cracked a little.
And something inside whispered, not yet… but maybe someday.
They spent the rest of the hour in silence.
But it wasn’t empty.
It was filled with everything they didn’t say.
The ache of almost.
The fear of too soon.
The soft, dangerous pull of something that mattered.
When she left, she slipped something onto his table.
A torn piece of her notebook.
No words.
Just a sketch.
It was his hands.
Rough. Honest. Holding nothing—but drawn like they could hold something if they wanted to.
Callum stared at it long after she was gone.
Then, without a word, he folded it and put it in his wallet.
Right next to a photo he hadn’t looked at in over a year.
- Writer
