Chapter Twenty
Present Day
The Hen’s and Bucks nights were set for later that evening. Sloane took me back to the hotel and as I got out of the car she simply said sternly. “Talk to him.”
“Okay.” I agreed, because she made me feel like I had no choice.
“I’ll be back with a shuttle at 8pm for our night of debauchery!”
I painted on a grin and whooped, even though I was desperate for an early night. Sloane left to go get ready at home.
When I got back to the room, Theo was there. He didn’t say anything as I walked in the door.
He sat at the desk, his laptop open, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was staring at nothing, a half-empty glass of whiskey in his hand.
I set my purse down, walked toward him. “Are you okay? You cancelled lunch—”
“Had stuff to do.” His voice was flat and he didn’t look up at me at all.
Something was wrong. Really wrong. The warmth from yesterday morning—from the lake, from everything—was gone.
“Theo, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.” He stood, walked to the mini bar. Poured another drink. “How was the salon?”
“It was... fine. But Sloane took me somewhere after.” I took a breath. This was it. “She took me to a gallery. Your gallery.”
His jaw tightened. “Did she?”
“Theo, the photographs—”
“I know what photographs are in my portfolio, Imogen.”
The use of my full name hit like a slap. He never called me Imogen… not like that, unless he was angry.
Summer 2016 – The Bennett’s porch
The manuscript pages were a living thing in my lap, warm from the sun and humming with my own terrified hope.
It was the first thing I’d ever written that felt true—not just angsty poetry or derivative fantasy, but a raw, messy story about a girl and a lake and a feeling of not fitting in her own skin. I’d let Sloane read it. Big mistake.
“Theo has to read this,” she’d declared, already snatching the notebook.
“No. Absolutely not. Give it back, Sloane, I swear to god—”
“He’ll get it. He sees things.”
That was the problem. I didn’t want him to see this. This was my inside spilled onto paper. He couldn’t have it.
I’d rescued the notebook, but she’d planted the seed. And now, a week later, I was sitting on the porch swing pretending to read while Theo developed photos in the makeshift darkroom he’d set up in his dad’s old tool shed. The whir-click of the enlarger was a faint, steady pulse.
The shed door opened. He stepped out into the late afternoon light, blinking, a single black and white print held carefully by the edges. He didn’t look at me. He walked over and sat on the porch step, his back to me, studying the photo.
Curiosity was a physical itch. I shut my book. “Good one?”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “It’s the one from the dock last week.”
My heart stuttered. The dock. Where he’d found me after the Chad-Brad incident. Where I’d been trying to disappear into the wood grain.
“Oh.” I tried to sound disinterested. “Let’s see the tragic damsel in her natural habitat, then.”
He turned then, his eyes meeting mine. They were too clear, too seeing. “That’s not what it is.”
He held the print out.
I took it. The paper was still slightly damp.
It was me. I was curled on the dock, knees to chest, face pressed against them.
My shoulders were hunched, not in a cute, poetic way, but in a way that looked like I was carrying something unbearably heavy.
The sunlight cut across my back, but I was in shadow.
You couldn’t see my face at all. It was just a shape of defeat.
But he’d captured the texture of my old sweater, the flyaway hairs escaping my braid, the tight grip of my own arms. It wasn’t a picture of a girl. It was a picture of a feeling. A feeling I knew intimately. Shame.
“It’s just me hiding,” I said, my voice too loud in the quiet.
“No,” he said softly. He pointed to the edge of the frame, to the water where the light hit it.
“It’s you, holding perfectly still, while the world goes on around you. Look at the light on the water, Gin. It’s chaos. It’s beautiful. And you’re here, in the middle of it, just… enduring. It’s the strongest thing I’ve ever seen.”
His words unlocked a chest inside me I didn’t want opened. He saw my hiding as strength. He saw my shame as endurance. He’d looked at my most pathetic moment and found something… worthy.
It was too much. The vulnerability was a live wire in my hands. I had to ground it. I had to make it safe.
“So your artistic take is that I’m a brooding rock in a sparkly pond?” I forced a laugh, handing the print back like it was a grocery receipt. “Deep, Bennett. Real deep. Maybe next you can photograph my laundry and call it ‘The Struggle of Modernity.’”
The air changed. The quiet, intense light in his eyes dimmed and shut off, like someone had thrown a switch. His face went carefully, utterly blank. He took the print back and looked at it, not like it was art anymore, but like it was a misprinted receipt.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice flat. “Maybe.”
He stood up, walked back to the shed door, and paused. He didn’t look back. “Forget it. It’s just a picture.”
The door closed softly behind him.
“Did I do something?” my voice was shaking as I spoke.
Finally he looked up at me, his expression unreadable. His eyes were hard, and his mouth was drawn in the thin line.
“No, I just need to focus on work.”
He looked back at his laptop, but still didn’t actually do anything. I walked to the side of the bed and sat down. I couldn’t talk to him now, not like this and suddenly, despite everything - despite yesterday, despite the gallery everything was fractured. Which was worse than awkward.
Awkward we could recover from.
One touch on a pressure point and we would shatter.
I rifled through my suitcase and settled on wearing a loose white blouse and high waisted pants. I slipped into the bathroom and closed the door.
I tied my hair up into a bun to stop it from getting wet and ran a bath. I was in there for a while, trying to work out what had changed when I heard the hotel door click.
I got out,dressed and then walked back into the room. Theo’s suitcase was gone, and so was every trace of him, leaving behind only the now shattered memories of the past few days.
I contemplated cancelling on the hens night. My heart wasn’t in it. But it wasn’t about me. I waited for the shuttle in the hotel car park with a forced smile on my face.
Rachel and Sophie had organised the Hen’s night. Mostly because they still lived here and the logistics of them organising it, had just made sense. Now after everything I was more than glad that they had.
I climbed into the shuttle and settled in the seat next to Sloane.
“How’d the talk go?” She asked - Launching into Theo related talk immediately.
“Nope.” I said back, segwaying the conversation in another direction. “Tonight is only about you.”