CHAPTER SEVEN: STORMS PAST AND PRESENT
678 Words
CHAPTER SEVEN: STORMS PAST AND PRESENT
The storm arrived just after dusk.
Clara had been watching it roll in from the back porch of the cabin—bruised clouds dragging their weight across the lake, lightning flashing like a camera behind gauze. The wind lifted her hair, sharp with the scent of pine and static.
“I should go,” she said, though her voice didn’t sound convinced.
Elias stood at the screen door, watching her. “Roads’ll be flooded soon. You’ll be safer here.”
Clara hesitated. Then stepped back inside.
Safer. That’s a word I’ve never trusted. Not since I learned that safety often means silence, and silence always meant distance.
The rain began—soft at first, then furious, drumming the roof in erratic rhythms. The lights flickered once.
“Generator kicks in if the power cuts,” Elias said, moving to the kitchen. “You hungry?”
Clara shook her head. “Not really.”
He opened a cupboard anyway. “Storm food. Crackers. Peanut butter. Cheap wine.”
She cracked a smile. “So basically: childhood dinner.”
“I aim to impress.”
They sat at the table by candlelight. The wine was exactly as awful as promised. The thunder shook the windows once, and Clara flinched.
Elias noticed. “Still hate storms?”
She nodded. “Used to crawl under the bed when I was little. Margaret thought it was dramatic. She’d tell me to act my age.”
“She didn’t mean it.”
“She never said otherwise.”
I just wanted her to hold me. Or pretend she understood. But she never knew how to meet me where I was—only where she thought I should be.
Clara set her glass down. “Can I ask you something?”
Elias leaned back in his chair. “Anything.”
“Why didn’t you reach out? After she left you. After she married my dad.”
He didn’t answer right away. The storm seemed to pull the silence tighter around them.
“Because I was angry,” he finally said. “Not at her. Not really. At myself. For thinking love would be enough to make someone stay.”
Clara looked at him, unsure what to say.
“And maybe,” he added, “because I knew if I saw her again, I’d ask her to run. And she needed someone who wouldn’t.”
And I’ve spent my whole life doing the opposite. Running first. Asking questions later.
She stood and walked to the window, watching rain streak the glass like memory. “Do you regret it?”
“Regret?” He let the word hang. “Yeah. Sometimes. But not the love.”
The wind groaned outside. The candle flickered between them.
Clara turned, leaning against the wall. “I was engaged once.”
Elias raised an eyebrow.
“He was good on paper. We had a life mapped out—careers, a loft, a dog we didn’t really like.”
“What happened?”
“I kept leaving,” Clara said. “Every time things got too still, too real, I ran. I told myself it was wanderlust. Creative freedom.”
“But it wasn’t?”
She shook her head. “It was fear. Of needing someone. Of being needed.”
Elias crossed the room slowly. “And now?”
She didn’t look up right away. When she did, her voice was barely a whisper.
“I don’t want to be that version of myself anymore.”
He reached out, gently touching her wrist.
“You don’t have to be.”
I want to believe him. God, I want to believe that this could be real—that not everything that feels right has to come with an escape plan.
The thunder cracked again, but neither of them moved.
When his arms came around her, it wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t rushed. It was quiet and steady—like shelter.
She let herself lean in.
Not because she was falling.
Because, finally, she didn’t have to fall alone.
- Writer
