6
The air changed the moment the door closed behind them. It grew denser, charged, as if the house itself recognized the intruders.
Sassy crouched lower on the stairs, heart pounding, listening to the voices below.
“…you were expected years ago,” the woman said.
“You broke the cycle,” the man added.
Donna’s reply was too quiet for Sassy to catch every word, but the tone—low, contrite—carried up the staircase like smoke.
Sassy pressed her palms to the worn wood, grounding herself.
A faint hum started in the back of her mind.
At first she thought it was the fridge or the furnace kicking on. But it grew—not in her ears, but inside her skull. Layered voices rising and falling, a pattern she didn’t want to recognize.
Women humming. Not a song with words. A sound with rules.
Her chest tightened. She knew that cadence.
The Garden of the Returning Light.
The name was a whisper in her mind, like something she’d heard once in a fever and then spent years trying to forget.
The cult Donna had supposedly escaped. The cult that wasn’t supposed to know where they lived. The cult Donna pretended not to remember.
A memory slammed into her without warning:
A ring of women in white, candles flickering at the edges of carved stone. An hourglass-like symbol on the floor where their hands met. A small child—herself—standing in the center with a ribbon tied around her wrist.
She felt again the phantom drag of that ribbon against her skin.
She sucked in a deep breath and yanked her hand away from the banister.
Downstairs, the woman’s voice floated upward. “The Bloom’s energy deteriorates after adolescence,” she said evenly. “You know that.”
Bloom.
The word sliced right through her.
She saw a book—thick, bound in faded linen, its pages crowded with looping script. A diagram of children arranged in spirals. Words: purity, light, re-seeding, sacrifice.
She’d traced those spirals once, with small, curious fingers.
Donna had closed the book.
“We don’t read that anymore,” she’d said.
Not we don’t believe it.
Not it’s wrong.
Just we don’t read that anymore.
Another memory came, fast and disjointed:
Donna standing among a group of robed women. Not on the edges. At the center. Their hands on her shoulders. Their eyes fixed on the little girl—on Sassy—at their feet.
Midwife, someone had called Donna. Not like the nurse in town. Something more.
Sassy squeezed her eyes shut.
This house wasn’t just where they ended up after running. It was a pause between movements. A hiding place between rituals.
“The Garden has shown you patience,” the man downstairs said. “That patience is exhausted.”
Sassy’s pulse slammed in her ears.
Donna spoke. Her voice sounded older and younger all at once. “I know the vows I broke.”
A crack ran through Sassy’s understanding of her mother.
Donna hadn’t just been a victim. She’d been a believer. A leader. A traitor—to them, maybe, but also to the girl she’d raised.
“The Protector line has been preparing for her return,” the woman said. “His training is complete. He’s in place.”
Sassy’s stomach dropped.
Protector.
The word felt like someone had taken the lid off another box in her mind.
A boy, older than her, offering his hand in a circle of stone. A ribbon tied from his wrist to hers. Voices chanting something about balance. About bonds.
Jimmy’s face flashed uninvited in her mind.
That was stupid. That was impossible.
But the feeling that her life had been arranged—that certain people had been placed around her—wouldn’t let go.
“We are here to restore order,” the woman went on. “This is no longer a request.”
Donna inhaled sharply.
Sassy slid down one step, just enough to see their silhouettes now: the strangers at the threshold of the kitchen, Donna standing opposite them, shoulders bowed.
Her mother’s face was pale, eyes bright with something like grief… and something like longing.
“Please,” Donna whispered. “She doesn’t even remember who she is.”
“Then you’ve failed twice,” the man said. “First when you stole her. Now by letting her rot in this lie.”
Sassy’s hand clamped over her mouth.
Stole her.
Stole her from where?
From whom?
Cold swept through her.
Another memory snapped free: running through a forest lit by flames, Donna carrying her, breath ragged, smoke turning the world orange and black. Behind them, a stone building burned. Voices called after them, not in panic, but in outrage.
“Don’t look back,” Donna had hissed into her hair. “Don’t listen. Don’t let them hear you cry.”
Back in the present, the woman’s voice sharpened. “It’s time to finish what was started. The Bloom is ripening. If she is not claimed, the energy disperses. The prophecy dies.”
Silence.
Sassy waited for Donna to say no. To slam the door. To tell them to leave and never come back.
Instead, her mother’s shoulders sagged.
“I hear the humming again,” Donna whispered. “I thought it was gone.”
The woman stepped closer. “That’s not your illness, Naomi. That’s the Garden calling you home.”
Naomi.
The name struck Sassy like a slap.
Her mother had never introduced herself as Naomi to anyone here. Never written it on any forms. Never taught Sassy to spell it.
Naomi Hale.
Donna Carruthers.
One woman splitting herself into names.
Downstairs, her mother gave a brittle, broken laugh.
“Then I suppose she’ll hear it soon too,” she said. “The closer they get to her.”
They.
Sassy’s skin crawled.
Who they were, she didn’t know yet.
She only knew this:
Her mother hadn’t truly escaped anything.
She’d only delayed it.
“It’s time,” the woman repeated softly. “Bring the Bloom back to the Garden.”
And Sassy, hidden on the stairs with her heart in her throat and the humming swelling in her ears, understood something sharp and simple:
Whatever the Garden wanted from her, they believed it had always been theirs.
And her mother was done pretending otherwise.
7
Sassy didn’t remember standing. Or moving. Or unhooking herself from the banister she’d clung to like a lifeline. She only remembered the sound that snapped her out of paralysis—
A soft tap at the back window.
Three taps.
A pause.
Two more.
The pattern was unmistakable.
Jimmy.
Her lungs opened all at once, a desperate swallow of air pulling her back to herself. She darted down the hall, heart pounding hard enough to bruise her ribs. Below her, voices—controlled, calm, lethal. Her mother’s tone woven through them like a thread unraveling from an old garment.
Sassy reached the back of the house and pressed her ear to the door. Footsteps approached from the front—slow, deliberate. They didn’t know she’d moved. Not yet.
She eased the door open an inch.
Jimmy’s face appeared in the narrow gap of the back window, shadowed by the porch overhang. He looked terrified—wild-eyed, pale—but alive with determination.
He mouthed: Come on.
She mouthed back: They’re inside.
Jimmy nodded once, jaw clenched, as if he’d expected it. He held up a small pry bar—nothing dramatic, barely the length of his forearm, but it was enough. Enough to wedge the window. Enough to break a lock. Enough to fight if he had to.
Sassy slid the door fully open just as a floorboard creaked behind her.
Too close.
They’d hear.
They’d come.
Jimmy grabbed her wrist gently but firmly. “Sass,” he whispered. “We’re leaving. Now.”
His voice—rough with fear, steady with devotion—collapsed the last of her hesitation.
She followed him.
They slipped out the back door just as her mother called up the stairs, “Sassy? Come here, sweetheart.”
The words shivered through her like a spell she’d once obeyed without question.
Jimmy pulled her down behind the garden shed, crouching together in the cold dirt. The house’s lights spilled across the yard, slicing the darkness into panes. Two silhouettes moved inside.
Jimmy exhaled shakily. “I knew something was wrong. You didn’t answer your messages. And… I just knew. I felt it.”
Tears threatened behind Sassy’s eyes—burning hot, as if every memory clawing to the surface had finally found a release valve.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t.” Jimmy cupped her cheek with a hand that trembled only slightly. “You don’t apologize for surviving.”
A shout echoed from inside the house.
Sassy flinched. Jimmy pulled her lower.
“We have to move,” the warmth of his words brushing her ear. “They’ll search the yard in minutes.”
Sassy nodded. She felt the truth of it in her bones.
They darted toward the back fence. Jimmy boosted her up, hands steady at her waist despite the danger closing in. She dropped down onto the far side, landing awkwardly in the wet grass. Jimmy followed, pulling himself over just as the kitchen door swung open behind them.
A beam of light cut across the yard.
“They know,” Sassy whispered.
Jimmy grabbed her hand and ran.
Not aimlessly—Jimmy always had a plan. He led her through the neighboring yards, across a narrow road, into the wooded ravine that bordered their town. Every sound felt amplified. Every snapped twig felt like a bullet. Sassy’s breath fogged the air as they wove between trees, Jimmy never letting go of her hand.
After several minutes, Jimmy slowed. He turned, checking for shadows, listening for pursuit.
Nothing.
Just the wind.
And their ragged breathing.
And the echo of her mother’s voice lingering in her mind.
Jimmy finally spoke. “I’m getting you out of here. Somewhere safe.”
She wanted to believe that.
But safety felt mythological now—like childhood, like innocence, like the life she almost had.
“Jimmy,” she said, stopping. “You don’t understand who they are.”
Jimmy stepped closer. “Then tell me.”
She couldn’t—not all of it—not yet. Every time she tried to summon the truth, her memories flickered like faulty film, revealing fragments then collapsing under their own weight.
“There was a cult,” she managed. “When I was little. They… took me. My mother was part of it.”
Jimmy’s expression tightened but softened at the same time—an impossible mix of fury and tenderness.
“And they want you back?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.”
He ran a palm over his face. “Sassy, I’m in this. I choose this. I choose you.”
Her chest squeezed so tightly she could barely breathe. “They’ll hurt you.”
“I don’t care.”
He stepped closer.
“I love you more than I fear them.”
Her breath left her in one trembling rush. The woods spun around her—dark trunks, cold air, the smell of damp leaves. And Jimmy, the one person who had looked at her like she wasn’t broken, wasn’t strange, wasn’t someone to fix or control.
He touched her forehead with his. “We can figure this out. I’m not letting you go.”
Something cracked open inside her— grief, relief, longing, terror—everything she had held down for years, everything her mother had buried with lies and missing memories.
“I don’t know who I really am,” she whispered.
Jimmy held her face in both hands.
“Then we’ll find out together.”
A twig snapped in the distance.
Sassy stiffened.
Jimmy’s grip tightened.
“We have to keep moving,” he said, voice low, urgent. “They’re not far behind.”
Together, hand in hand, they ran deeper into the woods—away from the house, away from the two strangers, away from the mother who had raised her and the past that wanted to claim her.
But as the darkness folded around them, one thought burned hot in Sassy’s mind:
The Garden doesn’t lose what it believes it owns.
And somewhere behind them, in the cold quiet night, she swore she heard a woman’s voice drift through the trees—
“Bloom… come home.”
8
They didn’t stop running until the woods thinned into a narrow maintenance road. Jimmy slowed first, bending forward with his hands on his knees, breath coming in jagged pulls. Sassy staggered beside him, her lungs burning, legs trembling so hard she thought they might snap beneath her.
The night pressed in from all sides—too dark, too loud, too alive.
“Sass… slow down,” Jimmy gasped, reaching for her.
But Sassy kept walking, stumbling more than stepping, her thoughts spiraling too fast to catch one. Every shadow looked like a person. Every gust of wind made her skin tingle with phantom touches—hands that weren’t there but had been once. Hands that held her down on cold stone.
“I—I can’t,” Sassy choked out. Her voice didn’t sound like hers. “They’re coming. They won’t stop. They never stop—”
Jimmy grabbed her shoulders gently but firmly. “Sassy. Look at me.”
She tried.
But the world kept tilting.
Jimmy’s face blurred at the edges, his features warping into the white masks from the ritual rooms—women humming, eyes blank, the smell of wax and cold clay.
Sassy flinched backward, shaking her head so violently her hair whipped across her face. “No. No no no, I can’t—Jimmy, I can’t do this—”
“Hey.” He caught her again, hands warm against her freezing skin. “You’re safe with me. You hear me? You’re safe.”
But the word safe cracked something in her.
Safe had never been real.
Safe was the lie her mother had fed her.
Safe was the childhood she thought she’d had.
Safe was the person she thought she was.
The memories surged again—unbidden, savage.
Her mother handing her a cup of warm milk.
Her mother brushing her hair before bed.
Her mother whispering, “You’re my whole world, Sassy.”
Then—
Her mother standing in a circle of white-robed women, chanting as Sassy’s wrists were bound.
Her mother pressing a kiss to her forehead and whispering:
“Bloom… surrender.”
Sassy dropped to her knees, palms digging into the cold gravel. A sob tore from her throat so violently it startled even her. “She lied,” she cried. “She lied about everything. I don’t even know who I am—”
Jimmy knelt in front of her, gathering her into his arms. She sagged against him, her body shaking in uncontrollable waves. He held her tighter, one hand gripping the back of her head, anchoring her as if she might float away.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I’ve got you, Sass.”
But she couldn’t hear him above the storm inside her skull.
Every image collided at once—candles, symbols, chanting, blood on stone, the burning temple, the forest escape, her mother’s voice breaking for the first time as she whispered, Run.
Then the memory she feared most crept in, slow and insistent, like something crawling beneath her skin—
A woman kneeling beside her during the ritual, lips brushing Sassy’s ear:
“Your true name is—”
Sassy slammed her hands over her ears and screamed.
Jimmy startled, then pulled her into him again, whispering her name over and over, grounding her with the only truth she still recognized.
“You’re Sassy. You’re Sassy,” he said fiercely. “You’re you. Nothing they say changes that. Nothing they believe changes that. I’m here. I’m not letting go.”
She sobbed into his chest, heart racing, throat raw.
Jimmy didn’t shush her.
He didn’t rush her.
He held her and let her break.
Minutes—or hours—passed before she could breathe without gasping. The cold seeped into her bones, matching the numbness spreading through her chest.
“Jimmy…” Her voice barely formed the word. “Why are you doing this? Why would you risk everything for me?”
Jimmy cupped her face with both hands, thumbs brushing the tear tracks on her cheeks. His eyes were dark with certainty.
“Because I love you,” he said simply. “Because losing you is the only thing I’m actually afraid of.”
Something inside her cracked again—but this time it let in light instead of darkness. A soft, trembling warmth she didn’t think she deserved.
“I don’t know how to be okay,” she whispered.
Jimmy pressed his forehead to hers. “Then let me help you until you can.”
They stayed like that, breathing each other back into steadiness, until a sound snapped through the trees—distant but unmistakable.
A car.
Slow.
Crawling.
Searching.
Jimmy pulled Sassy to her feet. “We have to keep going.”
She wiped her face with a shaking hand and nodded. This time, when she took his hand, she didn’t take it out of panic.
She took it because it was the only thing anchoring her to the present—
the one thing stronger than the cult, the memories, the prophecy,
and the name she still refused to hear.
Together, they slipped deeper into the night— Sassy bruised and unraveling, Jimmy steady beside her. Two fugitives bound by love and fear and an old secret that was waking faster than she could outrun it.
9
Jimmy’s uncle’s old hunting house sat at the end of a long dirt road, half-swallowed by weeds and decades of silence. The moonlight washed the sagging roof in silver, and the wind rattled the loose boards creating a haunting melody. It was abandoned enough to hide in. Forgotten enough to feel safe—if anything still could.
Jimmy helped Sassy down from the fence, his hands steady on her hips even though she felt weightless, unmoored. Her mind had not fully reattached to her body since the breakdown in the woods. Everything looked warped at the edges, too bright or too dull, as if she were viewing the world from a few inches outside herself.
“Sass,” Jimmy whispered, peering into her face, “you with me?”
She nodded, though the motion felt delayed, like a puppet tugged by threads.
They slipped inside the decaying one-story cabin. The air smelled of dust, old oil, and the faint sweetness of rot. Jimmy flicked on a small flashlight, its beam cutting through the darkness and settling on rusted hunting gear, stacks of canned goods, and an old bed covered in handmade blankets.
“It’s not much,” he said, “but no one comes out here. We’ve got time to figure a plan.”
But Sassy barely heard him. The shadows of the house stretched unnaturally long, pulling her gaze deeper and deeper into the dark corners. And in those corners, she swore she saw shapes—faint outlines of robed women, their heads bowed, humming the same tune that had haunted her memories.
Not real.
Not real.
Not real.
Jimmy moved closer. “Sassy? What is it?”
She blinked hard, and the shapes dissipated—but the humming didn’t.
It lingered inside her skull, a low vibration she couldn’t shake.
“I feel…” She pressed a hand to her chest, trying to steady the tremor beneath her ribs. “I feel like something’s opening. Like something I kept shut for years and now—now I can’t close it again.”
Jimmy drew her into his arms. She sagged into him, grateful for his solidity. His warmth. His normalcy.
“You’re safe,” he said against her hair. “Whatever’s happening, I’m right here.”
But she wasn’t sure safety still applied to her.
She wasn’t sure anything did.
Jimmy guided her to a stack of blankets on the corner of the bed and helped her sit. He brushed dirt from her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Your hands are freezing,” he said softly. “Let me get a lantern going.”
He crossed the house to an old metal lantern and coaxed a weak flame to life. The warm glow softened the shadows—but it also revealed something unnerving.
Sassy’s pupils were dilated, swallowing almost all the color.
Her skin was pale, but not the usual kind of pale—this was a drained, translucent pallor, as if light passed through her instead of reflecting off.
Jimmy knelt in front of her and lifted her chin gently. “Sass… what happened back there?”
She tried to speak. She truly tried. But words didn’t feel like tools she owned anymore. They felt borrowed.
Finally, she whispered, “I think they did something to me. When I was a kid. Something inside me. And now—I think it’s waking up.”
Jimmy shook his head quickly. “No. They brainwashed you, Sass. They conditioned you. Whatever you’re feeling—it’s trauma, not destiny.”
But destiny was exactly what The Garden believed in.
Destiny was what they had carved into her life.
Destiny was the word they used when they talked about Blooms.
Her fingers twitched uncontrollably. A tremor ran up her arm. She clasped her hands together to still them, but the trembling only intensified.
“I don’t feel like myself,” she whispered. “I feel like I’m… slipping. Like there are two versions of me fighting for space.”
Jimmy took her shaking hands in his, squeezing gently. “Then I’ll hold you to this one. I’ll keep you here. I promise.”
The words anchored her—barely.
But something in her chest thudded in response, like a second heartbeat trying to sync with his.
The lantern flickered.
Sassy looked up sharply.
Just outside the house, something moved.
Not an animal.
Not a shadow.
Something fluid, like a ripple in the air itself.
Jimmy didn’t see it.
But Sassy did.
And the humming in her head grew louder, clearer, almost melodic.
Her breath shortened. “Jimmy…”
He leaned in quickly. “Talk to me. What do you see?”
She swallowed hard. “I think… I think my memories aren’t the only thing coming back.”
Jimmy’s grip tightened. “Whatever is happening, we’ll stop it—”
But before he could finish, Sassy’s back arched in a sudden jolt. A sharp, electric pain shot through her spine. She gasped, clutching her ribs as the world tilted violently.
“Sass!” Jimmy caught her as she slumped forward, clinging to his shirt with white-knuckled desperation.
Her vision split—reality doubling, then tripling.
The barn.
The circle.
The hourglass symbol glowing on ritual stone.
Layers of worlds stacked on top of each other like transparent panes.
And behind all of it—
the faint outline of a woman reaching for her, whispering again:
“Bloom… return…”
Sassy screamed.
Jimmy wrapped his arms around her, holding on with everything in him, grounding her body against his chest.
“I’ve got you!” he shouted, voice raw. “Stay with me, Sass. Stay with me!”
She clung to him as the two worlds tore at her—the life she’d lived and the life the cult had forced into her blood long ago.
Between them, she could feel the split widening.
But still—
even as pain wracked her body, even as whispers clawed at her mind—
she felt Jimmy’s heartbeat pressed to her own.
Steady.
Human.
Real.
The one thing tethering her to this world.
The one thing keeping her from slipping entirely into the other.
10
Jimmy’s hands shook as he eased Sassy down onto the makeshift bedding of folded blankets. The barn smelled like hay and old oil, dust drifting lazily in the lantern glow. Her breathing came fast and shallow. Her eyelids fluttered, fighting to stay open and losing.
Whatever those people at the farmhouse had done to her hadn’t faded yet.
“Easy,” he whispered gently into her ear. “I’ve got you.”
She made a soft sound—half protest, half surrender—and turned her face toward him, like she was trying to find something solid in a world that kept shifting under her feet.
He brushed her hair off her forehead. Her skin felt clammy. Her pupils were too wide. When he’d grabbed her and run, she’d been frighteningly limp. Then the tremors started. The muttering. The way she’d tried to claw at her own wrists, like she was feeling something around them he couldn’t see.
“Hey.” His voice cracked. “Stay with me, Sass. Don’t go anywhere I can’t follow.”
Her fingers twitched against the blanket. No answer.
He should take her to a hospital. Any reasonable person would. But he could already hear the questions:
Why is she like this?
Has this happened before?
Was she hallucinating?
And then the answers he didn’t have words for:
A group with candles and white clothes and too-calm eyes.
A room humming like a beehive.
The way Sassy’s expression had changed right before she collapsed, like something unseen had reached inside her mind and twisted.
This wasn’t chemicals.
This was… others.
And he didn’t know how you tell an ER doctor that.
Jimmy swallowed hard, scanning the shadowed rafters like answers might be carved into the wood. He couldn’t call the cops. He couldn’t call an ambulance. The only person he trusted with this kind of impossible was the one lying in front of him—caught in whatever they’d awakened.
“You’re okay,” he whispered, more for himself than for her.
Her hand jerked, hitting his wrist.
Her lips parted. “Too loud,” she mouthed.
Jimmy leaned closer. “What is?”
“The… singing.” Her brow creased. “They won’t stop.”
He looked around the empty barn. “There’s no one here but us.”
“Not here.” Her fingers curled in the air. “Behind my eyes.”
His chest tightened. “Sass—”
She held her breath. For a long, suspended moment, he thought she was slipping under again.
Then her gaze snagged his.
Her pupils were still dark, but something sharpened behind them—like she’d found a thin wire inside the chaos and was pulling herself along it.
“Jimmy?” she whispered.
Relief hit him so hard his eyes stung. He laughed once. “Yeah. I’m right here.”
She blinked slowly, testing the weight of her own eyelids. “Did we… get out?”
“Yeah.” He shifted closer so she could see his face clearly. “You passed out in the truck. I brought you here. The old Miller place.”
She frowned faintly. “The one you used to sneak into when you were twelve?”
“Thirteen,” he corrected automatically, then winced. “Sorry. Not important.”
A ghost of a smile tugged at her mouth. “You got stuck in the hay chute and cried for your mom.”
“I did not cry,” he protested. “There was dust. In my eyes.”
A tiny, broken laugh escaped her. It loosened something tight in his chest.
“That’s better,” he whispered.
Her hand drifted over the blanket until it found his knee. Her fingers curled in the denim—anchoring herself to something real.
“I thought…” Her throat worked. “I thought you weren’t real.”
“I’m real.” He turned his hand palm-up so it pressed against hers. “You can check.”
She squeezed weakly. “You’re warm.”
“You’re freezing.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “How do you feel?”
“Like someone dropped my brain and all the pieces haven’t landed yet.” Her eyes drifted upward. “And like… something’s trying to sort them for me.”
He didn’t like that. Not at all. “Did they… do something to you?”
She swallowed. “They were chanting. And then the room—shifted. Or I did. I don’t know. It felt like they were pushing on me from the inside.”
Jimmy’s jaw tightened. “Okay. Well… whatever they did, you’re safe now.”
He stayed where he was. Stayed touching her hand. Stayed until the tremors eased.
He tucked the blanket around her shoulders, then sat down beside her, letting their shoulders touch. Her head tipped toward him instinctively. He moved so she could rest against him without strain.
Wind pushed against the siding outside. The lantern flickered.
“Jimmy?” she whispered, softer now. “Why did you come for me?”
It was such a Sassy question—like the idea of him not coming was somehow more reasonable.
“Because you needed me,” he said simply.
“I don’t remember calling.”
“You didn’t have to.” His voice softened. “I always know.”
“That’s cheating.”
“Maybe I’m observant.”
“You’re nosy,” she corrected, no heat behind it.
He smiled, crooked. “Sure. That too.”
Silence settled between them—not tense, but thick with everything they’d never said. The nights on her porch. The way he always stepped between her and the world. The way she always seemed to know when he needed pulling back from something stupid.
“I thought I was doing okay,” she said gently as if she was speaking to herself. Convincing herself of a truth she knew was a lie. “Managing Mom. The house. The… weird stuff. I thought if I kept everything small, it couldn’t find me again.”
“Whatever ‘it’ is,” he echoed.
“Yeah.” Her fingers tightened on his. “Whatever it is.”
He wanted to ask so many things. About her mom. About the chanting. About the way she’d looked right before collapsing. But the questions felt like knives, and she didn’t need knives.
Instead he said, “You don’t have to manage it alone anymore.”
She shifted her head, and he realized how close they were—how his arm had curled protectively around her without him noticing, how her cheek brushed his shoulder.
“If I say thank you,” she whispered, “does that make it real?”
“It’s real either way.”
She turned her face up toward him. Lantern-light caught her cheekbones, the tiny scar on her eyebrow. Her eyes were still too dark, but focused now—on him, fully.
His heart stuttered.
He’d imagined this moment more times than he’d admit. But he’d always held back. Her mother. Her walls. His timing.
This felt like the worst possible time.
And also the truest one.
“Sassy…” he began.
She lifted her chin—the smallest movement—closing the space between them.
For a second their mouths were a breath apart. Her hand slid from his knee to his chest, fingers curling in his shirt. His pulse jumped under her palm. He could feel the question in the air—
Then she inhaled sharply, eyes widening in dread.
“They’re moving,” she whispered.
The moment shattered.
Jimmy pulled back, adrenaline spiking. “Who is?”
Her hand fell from his chest. She stared at the barn wall as if she could see through it.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But they’re close.”
The haze hadn’t fully lifted, but something colder—sharper—had taken its place. Jimmy felt the hair on his arms rise.
“I can feel them,” she said. “Like pressure. Like the air before a storm.”
Jimmy stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the lantern.
Near-kiss or not—whatever those people wanted from her, they weren’t getting a second chance.
“Okay,” he said, steadying his voice. “Then we’re not staying here.”
He held out his hand.
She hesitated only long enough to swallow.
Then she took it, letting him pull her up into the dark.
Where is this going? It’s really kicking off. Will it be 5 chapters each post?