From this point on, the story deviates quite a bit, you could call it a butterfly effect because of our MC, even though she hasn't done much.
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Mail comes in a rubber-banded stack. Embry drops it on the hall table like it's heavier than paper. Cream envelopes sit on top, thick, names done in fancy loops.
Rina whistles. "That'll be it."
Sue doesn't touch them. She wipes a clean spot on the table and sets the stack back down in it. "People can pick theirs up,"
Paul strolls in with his hands in his pockets and that little grin sharpened. "What we got? Love notes?"
Embry flips one with a finger so the names face up. Swan & Cullen. The paper shines good. The room gets quieter without anyone trying.
"Cute," Paul says. "They did the ampersand and everything."
Leah walks past, catches it in the corner of her eye, and goes still. Her jaw works once. "Put it away," she says.
"Why?" Paul's voice lifts into a dare. "We scared of stationery now?"
"Because we don't need to watch him see it," Leah says.
"Him who?" Paul asks, all innocence.
Embry doesn't look at the door when it opens. He doesn't have to. "Jake," he says, relief and worry both, like a hand out and the second hand ready to catch.
Jacob crosses the room in three long steps, easy at first, then not. He's got grease on his knuckles and the kind of tired under his eyes you can't nap off. He stops at the table. The envelope sits there like a small white animal daring us to blink.
"No," he says. Soft. Then louder, to the room or the air or himself: "Nah."
Embry moves like he can make this gentler. "Man..."
Jacob's laugh is sudden and wrong. "What? You all waitin' on me to RSVP?" His hand lands on the stack and then jerks back like it burned. The grin snaps on too big. "Congrats to the happy couple."
No one is happy. Not here. Not for him.
He spins on his heel and is gone in the same breath, door banging, boots hitting the steps too hard. The air he leaves behind feels stepped on.
"Paul," Leah says, flat. There's a warning in it. He shrugs it off, the grin going brighter because that's his move when he's cornered. I don't look at him. I look at the door.
Sam's already moving from the far end of the hall. "Hold positions," he says, to everyone. To me: "South trail. Eyes on. Don't crowd him."
"Copy," I say, already jogging.
Outside, the sky is a lid. Jacob hits the lot, then the road, then the trees, like he can out-run paper. I give him distance and shadow the line he takes past the basketball court, past the sad little playground with the whale spring rider, onto the narrow dirt that dives toward the cliffs.
He moves fast and loose, all that heat and hurt and nowhere to put it. He doesn't look back. He doesn't need to. He knows how to run alone.
At the first bend I key the radio. "South trail, two bodies," I say low. "I'm a hundred yards back. He's headed for the overlook."
Rina clicks back on three. "Copy. Sam says maintain. No push."
"Maintaining."
The brush skins my legs. Fern water soaks my jeans to the knee. The air tastes humid. I keep my steps careful, loud enough that a wolf's ears would know I'm there, quiet enough that a boy's brain won't decide I'm following him.
He hits the overlook hard, stops in a skid, breath tearing at his chest. The ocean throws itself at the rocks. He stands with his hands on his hips, shoulders jumping. He looks seventeen and tired.
"Don't go close," I tell myself. "Don't talk."
He doesn't shift. He doesn't scream. He rocks once on his heels like he wants to kick the whole edge into the water and then pulls back from it like he scared himself. He rips the hair tie off his wrist and throws it, then watches it land two feet away like even his anger can't travel.
"Stupid," he says to the wind. Not at it. At himself. It's not for me. It still hits.
I take a tree and put it between us like a rule I can hold. I'm close enough to see the shake in his hands. Close enough to step in if he leans too far over the drop. Far enough that if he turns he can tell himself I was just passing.
The waves turn white and then calmer and then white again. He breathes with them for a minute. He presses his palms to his eyes and stands there until the wind dries the sweat on the back of his neck. A gull cuts the sky with a scream like it wants attention for the sound of its own throat.
"South trail, holding," I murmur into the radio.
Sam's voice comes back, steady as a loaded truck. "Copy. Don't let him take the creek drop if he moves. That slope's rotten."
"Understood."
He doesn't move right away. He just sits. Not on the log bench. In the dirt, knees out, elbows braced. It's the posture of a person who forgot how to hold his own weight and is practicing.
A jogger appears on the path behind me, sees the line of my back, sees the set of his shoulders, and turns around like she remembered something she left at home. Good.
Ten minutes is a long time to listen to someone breathe like that. Long enough for the guilt to try its little tricks. Go say something. Go say it gets better. Go say you're here.
He gets up like he is older now than when he sat. He wipes his hands down his jeans and starts back up the trail. I turn before he turns and let distance grow again. He doesn't see me. He's not seeing anything that isn't the road right in front of his feet.
At the fork, he takes the creek path: faster, but riskier. My stomach dips. There's a spot on that slope where the dirt looks solid until it isn't. I cut left into the brush, taking the wider line with better footing. I pick up speed, careful not to sound like I'm chasing.
He hits the bad spot and the earth goes out from under him. Reflex saves him. He grabs a root, swings, scrapes his knee. He catches himself on a trunk and stands there panting, forehead pressed to bark.
I hold my breath until he finds his feet. When he moves again, he's careful. That's worse, in a way. Careful means his brain is back online. Careful means he's thinking again, and what he's got to think about isn't friendly.
Back near the road, Embry's voice floats thin through the trees. Not words, just the shape. Jacob comes out quick anyway, past Embry's reach, past the hall, past everything. He doesn't look at anyone. He doesn't look at the table. He's a line you could draw with a ruler.
He heads for the garage. The door's up a foot, then half, then all the way. The bike sits there like a heart. He doesn't start it. He sits on the stool and sets his elbows on his knees and drops his head, hands clasped like he might pray if he remembered how.
I stop at the corner where the oil smell hits and watch the profile he doesn't show the fire. The radio scratches my palm. I key it without looking away. "South trail and return complete," I say. "He's at the shop. Safe. No shift."
"Copy," Sam says. "Good work."
It wasn't work. It was walking behind a storm and hoping it didn't turn around.
Embry slouches against the jamb a minute later. He doesn't cross the threshold. "You want company?" he asks, light on purpose.
"Nope," Jacob says, not mean. Just empty.
"Okay." Embry taps the metal with two fingers. "I'm right over there. Don't make me come rescue you from your own bad decisions."
"Not today," Jacob says, and the corner of his mouth tries to be a smile. It gives up.
Embry goes. He's good at going. He's good at not making his friend burn energy telling him how to help.
I let the breath I've been carrying go. My hands won't stop their small shake, the kind that comes after danger and not during. I turn and take the back way to the smokehouse, keeping to the long grass where shoes go quiet.
Inside, I sit and rub the heel of my hand under my sternum where the ache settled and won't move. The heater ticks. The rain starts polite and gets bolder.
I could have said hey. I could have offered a bad cup of hall coffee and a head nod. It would have been something, but it would have been for me. He needed a room with air and nobody telling him where to put it.
No talk yet. That's fine. That's honest. That's the kindness I can afford without breaking anything I can't fix.
I pull the blanket up and stare at the seams until they turn into nothing. The sound of the bike doesn't come. The night stretches. I let it.
[
Hello, readers! This fanfic is complete. If you want to read ahead of the public release, you can access my Patreon. Thank you.
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]