Chapter 12
Blakelyn
I smell him in the room. My thighs still ache from where he held me. My lips are raw from his mouth, and my chest—my chest is cracked clean open.
Wrapping the sheet tighter around my body, I stare at the ceiling as the fan hums overhead, too slow to offer relief, and too rhythmic to distract me from the war inside my chest.
He came back. He did. He walked to my cabin, knock, and waited for me to open the door.
He kissed me like he was drowning, and I was the only breath left in the world.
He touched me like he didn’t believe in second chances but couldn’t stop reaching anyway.
And then, as is his normal, he left. I understand.
I do. But I can’t pretend it doesn’t gut me every single time all the same.
The note is sitting on my counter, right next to my coffee pot.
Still here.
Two words scrawled in thick, uneven handwriting that looks like he nearly didn’t finish…. like it took everything he had just to leave that much behind. And it means something.
It’s not a lie. It’s not an apology. It’s not a promise.
It’s the one thing I never had from Tyler.
Presence.
Not performance. Not pressure. Not punishment.
Just a quiet kind of showing up.
I walk barefoot out onto the porch in the early morning light, when the first hints of pink, orange, and yellow kiss the horizon. The wood is hot beneath my feet despite the hour, as though it still remembers yesterday.
I’m sure it does. I do, too.
I glance at his cabin. His truck isn’t in the drive but the river hums through the trees. The sun climbs higher in the sky. And I remind myself, over and over again.
Still here doesn’t mean easy.
Still here doesn’t mean I’m safe.
Still here means he’s trying.
And that… that’s more than I expected.
By ten, I’ve cleaned the kitchen, remade the bed, and done a load of laundry I didn’t need to do.
By noon, I’ve checked my email, scrolled through an empty inbox, and closed the laptop twice without responding to the welcome message from the principal.
And by two, I’m pacing from one end of the cabin to the other.
I don’t have a text. He hasn’t knocked. I haven’t seen him today. And he hasn’t returned. I know he’s at the shop. It’s a day on the river which means that he’s open for business. And it’s his business. Of course, that’s where he is.
But I can’t sit here alone in the silence with the ghost of his hands on my skin anymore.
I’m going crazy.
I can’t do nothing anymore.
I pull on denim cutoffs, a soft white tank, and throw my hair into a low braid. Slipping on flip flops, I walk, taking the straight path across the grass and down the gravel road that leads to his shop.
The July Texas heat sticks to my shoulders, thick and humming.
I round the curve, and the tree line opens. Reece is outside the shop loading gear into one of the shuttles. He glances up when he sees me and lifts a brow like he already knows exactly why I’m here. “Afternoon, sunshine.” He smiles, friendly.
I smile, but it doesn’t reach my eyes. “Hey, Reece.”
He leans against the tailgate, wiping his forehead with a black bandana and nods at the shop. “He’s in the back. Said he was fixing the cooler, but he’s really just hiding from the noise.”
Thanks Reece.
I nod. “Thanks.”
As I pass him, he calls out, quieter this time. “Blakelyn, you’re the first person I’ve seen walk toward his silence instead of away from it.”
I pause, my breath hitching in my throat, then, I keep going.
The shop smells like cedar and sunscreen and the faint trace of engine oil. He’s crouched behind the counter when I step in, one hand braced against a cooler, the other twisting something with a wrench.
I don’t say anything. I don’t need to. The second he senses me, he stops moving. When he stands, I can tell he hasn’t slept either. His face is tight, drawn, and cautious. His eyes have dark circles beneath them. But he still causes my breath to catch in my throat.
His eyes find mine. They hold.
“Hey,” I say softly.
He nods once and replies, “Hey.”
We sit on the back steps behind the shop, our legs stretched out, with a mason jar of sweet tea sweating between us.
He’s quiet, but not cold.
I don’t push. Not yet. Instead, I talk.
I don’t talk about the river. I don’t talk about school. I don’t talk about him.
I open up and I tell him about me.
“I met Tyler about four years ago.” He goes still but let’s me talk. “At first, he was charming and perfect. He didn’t stay that way long. I think you know that considering he showed up here and you broke his rib.”
His jaw tics. “I should’ve hit him harder.”
I shake my head. “I’m not telling you because I want you to fix it…
fix me. I’m telling you because I need you to know what you’re touching when you touch me.
I want you to know.” His hands clench around his knees.
“I fell pretty hard pretty fast. But like I said, he seemed perfect. But he knew what to say… what to do. He made me feel like he really loved me and cherished me. Like he was the luckiest man in the world because he had me. I moved in with him within a few months. And it started not long after that. He was a different person. I realized really fast that the man who courted me, who hooked me, didn’t exist. He played a part to get what he wanted…
me. The first time he hit me, I was shocked.
I didn’t answer the phone when he called me on my way home from school because I was on the phone with my grandma.
I was going to call him back. But we didn’t hang up until I was home.
So, I went inside, and he was waiting for me.
He didn’t say anything, he just punched me in the ribs and said it was my fault for not valuing him enough to take his call.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t believe he hit me.
I started crying and he leaned down and grabbed my hair.
He yanked it as hard as he could and I tried to scream, but I couldn’t.
He told me that I had better answer when he called on the first ring from then on.
Then, he stood up, dusted off his hands and told me to get up and make dinner.
I laid there, in complete disbelief that had just happened to me.
When I didn’t get up, he kicked me in the stomach with his boots and as I curled in on myself, he said, ‘Don’t make me repeat myself. ’” I swallow, shaking from the memory.
“He didn’t leave bruises where people could see. He left them where I’d doubt I ever felt whole in the first place. His favorite places were my ribs, my stomach… and my vagina.”
Gruene exhales angrily and stares ahead, his jaw clenched tightly. I can tell he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. He’s letting me talk. Letting me get it out.
“He never let me say no. Not really. He said I didn’t mean it. He said that he knew my body better than I did… he’d abuse me physically, and then, while I was still writhing in pain, he’d abuse me… sexually.
“His favorite way to humiliate me was to kick or punch me in the vagina, and then, fuck me as hard as he could… He’d laugh while I cried, and then, he’d get off and just leave me there, used and full of shame.”
Gruene is dead silent, but his rage is palpable. I can feel it pulsing off of him.
“I left. I’d been packing up small things in small boxes for a month.
Only what I knew he wouldn’t notice. And then, finally, I left in the middle of the night.
I took my car—it’s mine but he made me put his name on it when I bought it—I changed my number and dropped the last name that was never mine but he made me use as though it was…
and I ran. I hopped around in motels and stayed at rest areas in my car for a bit.
But I applied for teaching jobs… and I ended up here. ”
His voice is a low growl when he says. “Why here?”
I blink. “Because here felt like the farthest place from there. And because I figured if I was going to rebuild, I should start somewhere that didn’t know me by anything but my own name.”
He exhales. It’s long and rough. He looks at me and reaches out, as though he wants to touch my cheek, but his hand falls. He says, “Blakelyn… I’m sorry. No one should have to endure that. Especially not you.” I swallow as tears fall down my cheeks.
He’s right. No one should. But I did. For too long. Because I was too scared to leave.
But I did leave.
I took my power back and I’m holding onto it.
Gruene starts quiet. “Molly smelled like oranges and clove and… sunshine on a spring day.” I don’t breathe, afraid he’ll stop if he realizes he’s opening up.
“She would bake on Sunday mornings before church even if she didn’t have time to eat what she made.
She said it made the house feel alive and she wanted her loves to have full bellies from food made with love.
” I stay perfectly still. “Aubree was five and she was smart as hell. She looked like me. She looked like me but had her momma’s personality.
She was so fierce. She wanted to be a firefighter and a ninja and a marine biologist and a fairy princess…
all at once.” He smiles thinking about her.
I shift closer, slow and quiet.