5. Chasity
CHASITY
Pale, watery sunlight filters through the gauzy curtains, painting stripes across the patchwork quilt.
For a moment, there is only the quiet hum of the old building and the distant sound of a truck gearing down on the main road.
Then, a crushing weight settles in my chest. My phone.
I cannot avoid it forever. It sits on the nightstand, a dark, silent slab of accusation.
It's time.
My mother answers on the first ring, her voice a tight coil of panic already halfway unsprung.
“Chasity? Oh my God, Chasity, where are you? Are you alright? Have you completely lost your mind?”
I push myself out of the warm bed and walk to the window, the old floorboards cool beneath my feet. My reflection is a faint ghost in the glass, layered over the damp mountain street below. A man in a fluorescent vest sweeps the pavement outside the general store.
“I’m fine, Mom. I’m safe.” My voice is a low murmur, a stark contrast to her frantic pitch. “I just… I needed a few days. To think.”
“Think? To think about what? Your wedding is tomorrow! Do you have any idea the mess you’ve left behind? Your father and I are beside ourselves.”
I lean my forehead against the cool pane of glass, watching the man finish his sweeping and disappear inside the store. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll come back soon. I promise.” The words feel like ash in my mouth. Something deep inside me screams in protest at the thought of turning the car around.
“The caterers, the venue… they’re all nonrefundable, Chasity.
We have hundreds of guests, family who flew in from all over.
And Jason…” Her voice drops, laced with new frustration.
“He won’t say a word. Not to us, not to his own parents.
He just locks himself in his office. Have you even spoken to him? ”
A fresh wave of nausea rolls through my stomach. “Yes.” The lie slips out, smooth and automatic. “We talked. We just need a minute to figure things out.”
The silence on the other end is heavy with disbelief. A sour, acidic guilt burns its way up my throat. The call finally winds down, her anger dissolving back into a pleading sort of terror.
“Just come home, honey. Please. Whatever it is, we can fix it. Just come home and fix this.”
The line goes dead. I lower the phone, my hand trembling. The brief, fragile sense of peace I felt this morning is gone, ripped away. It’s as if the suffocating weight I drove all this way to escape just hitched a ride and followed me right into these mountains.
My reflection in the window is a stranger with my face, haunted and pale.
I have to get out of this room. I yank on the oversized, knit sweater Lachlan left folded on a chair for me outside my door this morning, a silent offering against the mountain chill.
It smells faintly of woodsmoke and something clean, like fresh laundry dried in the sun.
The short walk to the diner is a bracing shock of cold air against my cheeks.
Lachlan’s directions were simple: “You can’t miss it.
It’s the only place besides the inn that has a pulse before noon.
” He was right. Pushing through the glass-panelled door is like stepping into another world entirely.
The air is permeated with the smell of sizzling bacon and brewing coffee, a warm, fragrant cloud that settles over me.
A jukebox in the corner crackles out a twangy country song between bursts of laughter from a table of men in work boots.
Waitresses weave through the organised chaos, their voices rising above the clatter of plates as they yell orders toward a steamy pass-through window.
A woman with a salt-and-pepper bun pinned neatly at her neck and a smile etched into the corners of her eyes looks up from behind the long formica counter.
“You must be the Possum Princess.” Her voice is warm, with a teasing authority that leaves no room for argument. Before I can form a response, she slides a heavy ceramic mug full of dark coffee across the counter. “Drink. You look like you need it.”
I obey, the hot liquid a welcome burn down my throat.
My hands feel steadier wrapped around the mug’s warmth.
Rosa—her name is stitched in red on her apron—shuffles past me, refilling someone else’s cup without breaking her stride.
I nod my thanks and turn, navigating the narrow aisle between booths to find a quiet corner.
Then I am not moving at all. I am colliding with something solid and unyielding. The mug tilts violently in my grip. Hot coffee sloshes over the rim, a scalding splash across my hand and a wide, dark stain spreading across the front of a man’s flannel shirt.
Mortification explodes in my chest, hot and sharp. “Oh my God, I am so sorry. I didn’t see you. I’m so, so sorry.”
The man stands perfectly still, a statue in the center of the diner’s current. He looks down at the brown splatter blooming across his chest, then back at me. His expression is unreadable for a long beat before one corner of his mouth quirks.
“Well. At least now I smell distinctive.”
The comment is so unexpected a sharp, undignified snort of laughter escapes me before I can clamp it down.
The sound is foreign, a crack in the smooth veneer of panic I have worn for days.
His expression remains a study in gruff indifference, but a glint of something dry and knowing flickers in his green eyes.
He does not smile, but the hard edge to his posture softens almost imperceptibly.
“That's Taven. Leave him be, Chasity.” Rosa’s voice booms from behind the counter, carrying easily over the clatter of cutlery.
“Taven Newman looks grumpy even on his best days. You’ve just given him a reason.
” She sets a fresh mug down for him with a decisive clink.
“Honestly, assaulting the local math teacher. You’re making quite the first impression. ”
Taven heaves a sigh that seems to carry the weight of every pop quiz he has ever graded.
He grabs the new mug and, with a reluctance that feels almost performative, gestures to the empty side of my booth with his chin.
He slides onto the cracked vinyl seat, his presence filling the small space.
The silence that settles is thick with my own embarrassment.
I open my mouth, the word ‘sorry’ already forming on my tongue.
“Don’t.” He holds up a hand, taking a slow sip of coffee. “It was a boring shirt.”
The easy banter that follows happens almost against my will. He tells me he teaches eighth grade math and coaches the middle school baseball team, which explains the deep-set exhaustion in his eyes and the way half the diner shouts things at him.
“Coach, is practice cancelled if it rains?” a man yells from a booth near the door.
Taven raises his voice just enough to carry. “Only if you're a snowflake, Henderson.”
He is a complete departure from Ben’s quiet strength or Lachlan’s disarming charm.
Taven doesn't tiptoe around my obvious disaster.
He meets it head-on. Between my fumbling attempts to explain why a woman in a strange sweater is stranded in his town, he cuts through the noise.
He leans forward, his gaze direct and unsettlingly sharp.
“Do you regret it?” he asks, his voice low. “Running.”
The question lingers in the air between us, heavy as a stone.
My gaze drops to the coffee mug clutched in my hands, the dark surface reflecting the fluorescent lights above like a shattered constellation.
Do I regret it? The answer should be an immediate, gut-wrenching yes.
It should be the only answer. But the word gets stuck somewhere behind my ribs, a jagged piece of bone.
I have no answer. The panic is too new, the freedom too terrifying, the future a blank, white wall.
I trace the thick ceramic rim with my thumb, over and over.
"How did you know?"
He smiles. "You're in a small town. Word travels fast when something new happens around here."
Taven just watches me, his green eyes missing nothing. The silence in our small booth is a bubble in the diner’s noisy current. I brace for the lecture, the quiet judgment that I am a foolish, selfish girl who made a mess.
Instead, he leans back against the cracked red vinyl, the movement slow and deliberate. His voice, when he speaks, is low enough that only I can hear it over the clatter of plates.
“Staying miserable would’ve been worse.”
It is not a question. He says it like an undisputed law of nature, like gravity or the sun rising in the east. The simple, unvarnished truth of it hits me like a physical blow.
It is not absolution. It is not permission.
It is just… a fact. A fact he seems to know from a deep, personal place.
A knot of shame I have carried for the last forty-eight hours, a tight, painful thing lodged in my sternum, loosens its hold. Just a little.
I manage a single, jerky nod, unable to speak past the lump forming in my throat. I drain the rest of my lukewarm coffee, the sound of the diner rushing back in to fill the space his words cleared. I slide out of the booth, my legs feeling strangely numb.
“Thank you,” I murmur, the words inadequate. “For the coffee.”
As I reach the door, Rosa’s voice rings out from behind the counter.
“Try not to attack anybody else before lunch!”
A few of the regulars chuckle. I feel the heat rise in my cheeks as I push the door open, the little bell above it tinkling a cheerful goodbye.
The crisp mountain air bites at my face.
On impulse, I glance back one last time.
Through the big plate-glass window, past the neon ‘OPEN’ sign, Taven is still sitting there.
He watches me, his mug paused halfway to his mouth.
The gruff annoyance is gone from his face, replaced by an expression far more thoughtful, and infinitely more unsettling.
I can't decide if it's unnerving or exciting.