Chapter Fourteen
Raven sat cross-legged on her bed, laptop balanced on her knees, staring at the screen like it might bite her.
She should have known better than to look.
She always knew better than to look.
But here she was, at three in the afternoon on a Wednesday, scrolling through comment after comment, each one a tiny paper cut to whatever was left of her ego.
Raven spotted in rural village: has she gone into hiding?
Krimson Kisses star looking rough these days
Anyone else think she's aged like milk? Alissa dodged a bullet tbh
She's 35 and washed up. What did she think was going to happen?
Failed solo career before it even started lmao
That last one made her laugh, which was probably not the healthiest response. Failed before it started. That was one way to put it. The more accurate way would be "hasn't even attempted because she can't write a single fucking song anymore," but that didn't have quite the same ring to it.
She kept scrolling, hating herself a little more with each swipe.
There were the think pieces about Alissa's wedding, speculation about why Raven had "really" left the band (drugs, obviously, or maybe a mental breakdown, or maybe she'd been kicked out and the label was covering it up).
There were threads analyzing her every Instagram post from the past year, looking for "signs" that she was struggling.
And underneath it all, like a Greek chorus of doom, the same refrain over and over: washed up, has-been, past it, finished.
Thirty-five years old, and already written off.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Claire: Stop reading the comments.
Raven ignored it and kept scrolling.
She found the articles about the photo Nina had taken. The one that had blown up her carefully constructed anonymity and turned Bankton into a target for every bored journalist with a deadline to meet.
Most of them were benign enough. Raven Teaching Village Children with a few paragraphs of bland speculation about her "new direction" and "return to her roots."
But the comments. God, the comments.
She looks miserable
Publicity stunt. She probably tipped them off herself
Teaching kids? Is this community service for something?
I heard she's in rehab. That's why she's hiding in the middle of nowhere
My cousin lives near there and says she's a total bitch IRL
Can't believe Alissa wasted five years on her
That one stopped her cold.
Five years.
Had it really been five years? It felt longer. It felt like forever. It felt like Alissa had been woven into every part of her life for so long that Raven had forgotten where she ended and Alissa began.
And then Alissa had married someone else.
Without telling her.
In Vegas.
Raven closed the laptop with more force than necessary and set it aside.
She needed a drink.
Or several drinks.
The pub seemed like the obvious choice.
THE PUB WAS busier than she might have expected for a Wednesday afternoon, which meant there were approximately six people scattered across the various tables and one old woman knitting something that might have been a scarf or possibly a noose.
Raven claimed her corner booth and ordered a beer.
"Rough day?" Arty asked, setting the glass in front of her.
"Why would you think that?"
"You're drinking at four in the afternoon, and you look like you might stab someone."
"Perceptive."
"It's a gift." He slid into the seat across from her without asking, which was becoming a habit. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not particularly."
"Want me to leave you alone?"
Raven considered this. "Also not particularly."
"Right then." He settled in, looking entirely too comfortable. "We'll just sit here in companionable silence while you brood."
"I don't brood."
"You're literally brooding right now."
"This is thinking."
"If that's what you want to call it." He signaled to the bar for his own drink. "Saw the photos, by the way. You and the children. Looked quite sweet, actually."
Raven glared at him.
"I'm just saying, not the worst publicity you could have gotten. Better than 'Rockstar Arrested for Public Intoxication' or 'Raven's Meltdown Caught on Camera.'"
"I've never been arrested for public intoxication."
"Yet."
Despite herself, Raven felt her mouth twitch. "You're insufferable."
"I prefer 'charmingly direct.'" His drink arrived and he raised it in a mock toast. "To unwanted publicity."
She clinked her glass against his, feeling marginally less stabby.
They sat in silence for a moment, the kind that was surprisingly comfortable for two people who barely knew each other.
"The comments," Raven said finally. "They're brutal."
"They always are."
"It's not even about the photo. It's about… everything else. The breakup. The band. The fact that I'm thirty-five and apparently past my prime."
"Ah yes. The ancient age of thirty-five. Practically one foot in the grave."
"I'm serious."
"I know you are. That's the problem." Arty leaned back, studying her. "How long have you been reading comments?"
"Too long."
"And has a single one of them made you feel better about yourself?"
"Obviously not."
"So why keep reading?"
Raven didn't have a good answer to that. Because she was a masochist? Because some part of her believed they were right? Because it felt like penance for something, though she wasn't entirely sure what?
"I shouldn't have come here," she said instead.
"To Bankton?"
"To anywhere. I should have stayed in London, or gone abroad, or…" She gestured helplessly. "Not subjected a tiny village to tabloid attention just because I couldn't deal with my own shit."
"Is that what you think you've done?"
"That's what I know I've done. Look at that photo. Look at the headlines. I brought that here."
Arty was quiet for a moment, turning his glass in his hands.
"I used to be a journalist," he said finally. "Did I mention that?"
"You might have."
"Investigative reporting, mostly. Political scandals, corporate corruption, the sexy stuff.
" He smiled, but there was no humor in it.
"I was good at it too. Really good. Won a few awards, got some high-profile cases.
But the thing about that kind of journalism is that you're always chasing the next story.
Always looking for the angle. Always compromising just a little bit more to get ahead. "
Raven listened, not sure where this was going.
"I burned out," Arty continued. "Badly. Panic attacks, insomnia, the whole works. My editor told me to take a break, but I knew if I took a break I'd never go back. So I quit. Came here, bought the pub, and never wrote another word."
"Sounds like running away."
"It was. For a while." He met her eyes. "But then it became something else. A choice. Running away and hiding are different things, you see. One's about fear. The other's about choice."
Raven frowned. "What's the difference?"
"Running away is temporary. You're always looking over your shoulder, always waiting for the thing you're running from to catch up. But hiding?" He smiled. "Hiding is active. It's deciding that this is where you want to be, not because you're afraid of what's out there, but because this is better."
"You think I'm running away."
"I think you haven't figured out which one you're doing yet."
The words landed with more weight than Raven had expected. She took a drink. "I never should have come here," she said again, but this time it sounded less certain.
"Maybe," Arty said. "Or maybe Bankton is exactly what you need."
"A village full of nosy people who think bringing casseroles is a personality trait?"
He laughed. "A place to lick your wounds and become yourself.
Away from the noise, away from the people who think they know who you are based on tabloid headlines.
" He finished his drink and stood. "The village is protective of their own, you know.
Look at Lilah Paxton. She's lived here for ages and there's never any gossip about her in the papers. "
"Yeah, I’m not part of the village though, am I?"
"We’ll see," Arty said.
"And anyway, Lilah Paxton has an actual career to protect. I'm just… flailing."
"You're writing an album."
"I'm trying to write an album."
"Same thing." He patted her shoulder as he passed. "And for what it's worth, those kids at the school? They don't care about tabloid headlines. They just know you're teaching them songs. That's real. The rest is just noise."
Raven watched him go back to the bar.
She finished her drink and ordered another.
BY THE TIME she made it back to the cottage, it was dark and she was pleasantly buzzed but not quite drunk. Just fuzzy enough around the edges that the comments didn't sting quite as much.
Her guitar was waiting by the window where she'd left it that morning.
She picked it up without thinking, settling into the armchair, fingers finding the strings automatically.
For weeks now, every time she tried to write, nothing came. Just angry, bitter fragments that went nowhere. Lyrics about Alissa that felt petty and small. Melodies that reminded her too much of the band, of everything she'd lost.
But tonight something felt different.
Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was Arty's words echoing in her head. Maybe it was just exhaustion finally breaking through the wall she'd built around her creativity.
She played a few chords, slow and contemplative.
Then a few more.
And then, almost without meaning to, words came.
In the quiet, in the storm
When the noise won't let you breathe
There's a place where you can form
Something new from what you grieve
It wasn't much. Four lines. Probably not even good.
But it was something.
For the first time in weeks, she'd written something that wasn't about Alissa, wasn't about the band, wasn't about everything she'd lost.
It was about… this. Whatever this was.
She played the lines again, adjusting the melody, feeling the shape of the song start to emerge.
Her phone buzzed on the side table. Another notification, probably. More comments, more think pieces, more people who thought they knew her based on a photograph and a headline.
She ignored it.
Arty's words came back to her: Running away and hiding are different things. One's about fear. The other's about choice.
She wasn't sure which one she was doing yet. But maybe, just maybe, she was starting to figure it out.
She thought about Annabelle, standing on her doorstep, apologizing profusely for something that wasn't even her fault. Those ridiculous blue eyes full of genuine distress, like she'd personally destroyed Raven's life rather than just… been tangentially involved in a photo.
This wasn't Annabelle's fault. She'd been nothing but kind, in her relentlessly cheerful, boundary-ignoring way.
Nina had taken the photo, sure, but Raven couldn't even really blame her for that.
The woman was clumsy and enthusiastic and probably hadn't thought twice about posting a sweet moment to the school's social media.
And Raven herself had accidentally put Annabelle on the internet that first week, dinosaur pajamas and all.
So really, they were even, weren’t they?
She closed her eyes, still playing those four lines over and over, and let herself think about Annabelle properly for the first time since the photo.
The way she'd looked watching Raven teach the children, like she was seeing something she hadn't expected.
The way she always smiled, even when Raven was being deliberately difficult.
The way she baked biscuits and organized fundraisers and seemed to genuinely believe that everything would work out fine in the end.
It was exhausting, that kind of optimism.
And also… sort of nice.
Raven opened her eyes and looked down at her guitar.
Four lines. It wasn't much. But it was a start.