Eight

A Flash of White

By morning, the air had turned to glass. What remained of last night’s late rainfall glittered on the edges of the field behind the school, the sun burning through it in shy, early-autumn gold. Everything felt thinner, sharper, as though the world had shed a layer of warmth overnight.

     Damien was already there when I arrived. He stood by the courtyard steps, half-hidden in shadow, like he’s been waiting long before anyone else had thought to come. His breath didn’t fog the air like mine did on that unusually cold day.

     He looked up when he heard me approaching, and for one suspended moment, the rest of Clearwater High seemed to fall away. The murmur of students, the smell of wet leaves, the hum of the bell far down the hall. For a moment, there was just him, and the quiet hum behind my ribs.

     “Morning,” I said, smiling as my heart fluttered, my voice sounding smaller than I meant it to be.

     “Good morning to you, Claire,” he said, like he’d been waiting to say it all along. 

     When we fell into step together—not planned, and not spoken, just… easy, somehow—the hallway lights flickered as we passed, a strange rhythm that seemed to follow him more than it did me.

     “It’s so cold today,” I said, just to fill the silence that was lingering between us.

     He glanced out the window beside us, smirking a bit. “It’s always colder before something changes.”

     I wasn’t sure what he’d meant by that, but the way he’d said it made me want to know. 

     We stopped at my locker. I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks as he hovered over my shoulder. It was totally ridiculous, but only because I hadn’t even done anything yet. But he was watching me with that same quiet intensity of his, his eyes the color of stormwater, searching and patient.

     “What?” I asked, smiling awkwardly as a means to cover how unsteady I actually felt.

     “Nothing,” he said after a long pause. “You just… look different in the morning light.”

     It shouldn’t have sounded like a confession. But it had. And, somehow, in that dim stretch of hallway, it felt like the entire day leaned toward that one, single sentence.

     He reached out then. Suddenly, just the barest possible touch, and his fingers brushed a loose strand of hair from my shoulder. The movement was so light I might have imagined it, but my pulse betrayed me anyway, rushing into my ears, my skin suddenly alive with it. 

     The gesture caused me to shudder.

     “Oh, sorry…” he muttered. “It’s… an old habit of mine…”

     “What kind of habit?” I inquired.

     The corner of his mouth tilted. It wasn’t quite a smile, and it wasn’t quite secrecy, either. “The kind of habit that isn’t so easy to break, unfortunately.”

     The warning bell rang then, startling the both of us. He stepped back, breaking the connection our eyes had made, the spark between us fizzling out before it could ignite, the distance sudden, like a door closing between us. I thought I saw something flicker in his expression, something like regret. Or perhaps it had been restraint. 

     He glanced down the hallway. “I’ll see you after class, then?” The question hung there between us, soft but electric. His eyes flickered in that moment, a flash of silver going off within them, and then my heart fluttered again. I was nodding before I could even think, a strange compulsion overcoming me as I opened my mouth and said, “Yeah. Of course.”

     He smiled again, just a ghost of it this time, and then he was gone, weaving through the tide of students as if they weren’t even really there.

     I stood there long after the hallway had emptied, the echoes of his footsteps still caught in the walls.

     When I finally turned to go, I caught sight of my reflection in the locker’s metal. My cheeks were flushed; alive in a way that I hadn’t seen before. It was terrifying, I thought. How easily one simple morning could completely change the entire rhythm of my heart.

     Outside, the leaves were changing. Beginning to fall in slow deliberate spirals of amber and rust. And I couldn’t shake the thought that Damien was part of the season itself, somehow.

     That he belonged to the colder light in the way that I belonged to the warmth.

**********

By the time the final bell rang, the sky had begun to turn the color of watered gold. The air outside smelled like woodsmoke and rain on dry leaves. I should have gone straight home—the road curved through the forest, and dusk came fast around the turn of the season—but when I saw Damien waiting near the gate, leaning there like he’d always belonged to it, every sensible thought I had slipped quietly away from me.

     He didn’t say anything at first. He just fell in step beside me, matching my pace exactly, as though we’d walked home together for years, despite never having done it before at all.

     The road left town behind within minutes, winding into the trees.

     The woods held the last light differently. It was soft. Green-gold, and it filtered through the branches until everything felt like a half-remembered dream.

     “I don’t usually walk home this way,” I said, though it had been a lie.

     He smiled without looking at me. “I know.”

     There was something in his voice, then. It wasn’t exactly arrogance, though I could see that he was, and it wasn’t mystery. It had been certainty, I realized; gentle and a little bit unnerving.

     The path narrowed before too much longer, crunching beneath our feet as we walked on. I could hear the river that reached out from the lake far-off, a muted rush beneath the sound of crows. The wind picked up, and the leaves danced around us, small frantic whirlwinds of rust and flame.

     “You like the quiet,” he said after a while, breaking me from my trance.

     I looked up at him. “Is it that obvious?”

     “Only to someone that knows how to listen,” he replied, speaking as if his heart hadn’t really been in it.

     Hearing him say it made me smile, though I tried to hide it.

     The smile lingered anyway. I felt a quiet warmth settle beneath my ribs before I could convince myself to dismiss it. It had become strangely easy to smile around him, I’d realized, despite knowing almost nothing about him. 

     The path curved gently beneath towering maples whose branches had begun surrendering themselves to autumn. Leaves drifted lazily through the air around us, catching briefly in Damien’s dark hair before tumbling silently to the earth. The forest floor had become a tapestry of amber, crimson, and fading gold, every step releasing the faint perfume of damp leaves, pine needles, and rich black soil still holding onto the memory of summer. 

     The afternoon seemed unwilling to end. Sunlight poured between the branches in long golden ribbons that painted the trail ahead of us, turning ordinary patches of moss into emerald velvet and spiderwebs into delicate strands of silver. Somewhere high above, a flock of blackbirds burst suddenly from the treetops, their wings filling the silence for only a heartbeat before disappearing toward the distant lake. 

     Neither of us spoke for a long time.

     The silence simply seemed to accompany us along.

     I found myself stealing glances whenever I thought he wasn’t looking. The thoughtful curve of his profile, the loose strands of dark hair stirring by the gentle caress of the breeze, his hands resting comfortably inside the pockets of his coat. He walked with the same quiet grace I’d noticed from the first moment he entered my life at Marlowe’s, each step measured, unhurried, as though he had long ago discovered there was no reason to rush through beautiful places. And, for reasons I couldn’t explain, walking beside him made the forest feel older.

     Every tree seemed to possess its own silent history. The stones lining the trail appeared carefully placed rather than scattered. Even the wind weaving through the branches carried an ancient sort of patience, whispering softly overhead in a language I almost believed I understood. 

     “You’ve lived here a long time?” The question slipped free before I had fully considered asking it.

     He was quiet for a moment. “I’ve been near Clearwater for a very long time, yes.”

     Near, not in. 

     The distinction caught my attention.

     “Near?” I pressed.

     He smiled faintly. “I’ve always preferred the woods.”

     I glanced around us. “I can see why.”

     He looked over toward the towering pines stretching endlessly ahead. 

     “It’s beautiful out here,” he said, looking around us again, smiling pleasantly. “The trees tend to ask very little of you.”

     “And people ask too much?” I said. “Is that it?”

     His smile deepened almost imperceptibly. “Sometimes, yes.”

     The answer felt honest. I wondered, and not for the first time, what sadness lived there so quietly behind his eyes.

     “You seem so lonely.” 

     The words escaped so softly I almost hoped the wind would carry them away before he heard them. Instead, he looked over at me in deep consideration.

     “I suppose that everyone is,” he answered after a while.

     “I don’t think that’s necessarily true,” I replied, looking at him.

     “No?” 

     I shook my head. “Mm-mm. I think that people convince themselves they’re less lonely by surrounding themselves with noise.” 

     He regarded me for a long moment.

     “You understand the quiet, then?” he asked, one eyebrow rising high.

     I thought it over, nodding. “I guess I do.”

     “I knew that you would,” he said.

     Again, there was that same familiar certainty; gentle and unshakable, as though he’d spoken from knowledge I hadn’t shared. I laughed quietly, more from nervousness than amusement.

     “You keep saying things like that, you know,” I pressed.

     “What things?”

     “Like you already know me.” 

     His expression tightened, his eyes darkening a moment, and then his face lightened all at once. “I know enough.”

     My heart fluttered unexpectedly, his words filling me with cold curiosity.

     “Enough for what?” I asked him.

     He looked ahead again. “To know that you are far kinder than you think you are.” 

     The compliment caught me completely off guard. Heat rose gently into my cheeks.

     “But you barely know me,” I said, chuckling a bit.

     “No,” he said flatly, his voice remaining calm. “I have only just met you, after all.”

     Yet, somehow, the words sounded incomplete, as though another sentence had almost followed them. 

     One that he decided not to say.

     We reached a small wooden bridge crossing the narrow stream that fed into the lake. Water slipped over smooth stones below us, carrying bright red maple leaves downstream in slow little flotillas. Ferns crowded the banks, their green fronds beginning to surrender to autumn’s fading touch, while moss clung stubbornly to every weathered plank beneath our feet.

     We stopped without discussing anything further, and I heard the stream sing beneath us. I leaned against the worn wooden railing, watching the water disappear beneath overhanging branches.

     Damien stood beside me, close enough to me that I became aware once again of the faint scent of cedar carried by his coat. It reminded me strangely of the forest after fresh rain. Comforting and soothing and familiar. Without realizing it, I’d begun associating that scent solely with him.

     The thought embarrassed me.

     I looked down quickly.

     “I’ve been thinking about something,” I said nervously, unsure I wanted to say more.

     “What is it?” he asked, looking back at me, his dark eyes glinting in the mellow light.

     “Back at the cafe,” I went on, “where we first met.”

     He remained silent.

     “You looked at me like…” I searched for words that refused to arrive. “...like you’d been expecting me.”

     The stream continued murmuring beneath us. A leaf landed gently upon the water and drifted away. 

     Finally, he spoke. “I was… surprised, to say the least.”

     “Why, though?” I pressed. “Because I reminded you of someone else?”

     “Yes, Claire,” he answered, sighing. “That is exactly why.”

     “Who did I remind you of?” I asked.

     His fingers rested lightly upon the weathered railing. For several long moments, he simply watched the water.

     “I wish that I knew how to answer that question,” he told me then, his words coming slow and uncertainly, as if he’d feared saying them for some reason.

     “You always seem to stop saying anything just before you can explain yourself,” I accused, watching a quiet smile cross his face. 

     “And so you’ve noticed,” he teased.

     “I notice a lot, as a matter of fact,” I teased back.

     “So I’ve gathered.”

     I laughed again. “So have I.”

     For the first time since we’d begun walking, he laughed as well, the sound quiet and brief, transforming something in his face. The melancholy of him never disappeared, but it no longer stood alone. Seeing him laugh like that made something unexpectedly tender bloom inside me. 

     It wasn’t dramatic, not the dizzy infatuation I’d seen in movies or read about in novels. It was quieter than that. A gentle fondness, the beginning of real trust. The curious desire to hear him laugh again, to discover what else might hide beneath all that careful silence.

     I realized then that somewhere along our walk, I’d stopped wondering whether I should be wary of him. Instead, I found myself hoping the path would stretch on for another mile. And then another. Then another. 

     I had begun to enjoy now knowing all the answers to my questions, I think.

     The mystery surrounding Damien Cross no longer felt like a wall standing between us. It felt like the breath of the forest itself; ancient and beautiful, tender and romantic, something to wander through rather than solve.

     The wind lifted once more, sending another flurry of crimson and gold leaves swirling across the bridge around us. For one suspended moment they danced in the late afternoon light like tiny embers floating through the woods.

     Damien looked upward, watching them all fall with a distant smile. I watched him instead, and somewhere between the whispering trees, the singing stream, and the slow descent of autumn around us, a quiet realization settled gently into my heart.

     I wanted to know him, I decided.

     Not simply because he was mysterious, and not because of my seemingly prophetic dreams about him or about Clearwater, and not because of the strange feeling that our lives had somehow brushed against one another long before we’d ever spoken. I wanted to know the man who found comfort in such quiet places, who listened more than he spoke, and who carried an old sadness without allowing it to harden into bitterness, the man who walked through the forest as though he belonged to it.

     The thought arrived so naturally that it scarcely startled me. It simply became true. And somehow, that frightened me far more than the mystery ever had.

     He glanced over at me then, and the fading light caught in his eyes, strange and silver, like moonlight trapped in deep water. For a second, I lost my breath to it. 

     We walked a long time without speaking, but we didn’t really need to. I told myself that it had felt right just being there with him like that, by his side, though I couldn’t explain why, and I became acutely aware of every small little thing around us, as if I were seeing it all in a new and appreciative light—the subtle brush of his shoulder against mine whenever the path bent or split, the faint scent of lingering rain in his clothes, and the way his steps made almost no sound at all.

     When we reached the clearing by the old bridge, nestled there against the lake, he stopped. The water below moved sluggishly, catching fragments of the dim sky. He leaned on the railing, watching it, his profile all sharp and precise lines and tentative distance.

     “Do you ever… feel, Claire,” he asked me softly, “that some places remember more than they should?” 

     Wow, I thought, deep. Then I frowned, not really understanding what he’d meant. At least, not entirely. “Like… memories in the lake, you mean?”

     He nodded, but it had been a slow gesture. “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Clearwater, I think, has too many of them.”

     There was something in his tone then, a wistful, almost mournful sensation that sent an unwelcome chill through me.

     “Is that why you came here?” I asked him, lingering beside him nervously.

     His smile was brief, sorrowful; barely a smile at all. “I think that I was drawn here,” he said then, pausing another moment. Then he added, “I think that I was drawn to you, Claire.”

     The words should have felt too heavy for the moment, but for some reason I do not know they didn’t. I couldn’t explain why, but those words had settled quietly between us, like leaves landing on water. And before I could speak, he turned slightly, facing me. His expression had changed. It was much softer now, but more distant than before, as though he were looking at something far beyond me.

     I looked at him. “What does that mean?”

     The question came quietly, suddenly afraid that if I happened to speak too loudly, whatever it was that existed between us might disappear.

     Damien lowered his gaze toward the water. For a while, he said nothing. I had begun to notice that about him, too. He never rushed words. He treated every silence as though it mattered. As though the silence itself could carry meaning if you listened carefully enough to it. Finally, he did speak.

     “Have you ever walked into a place you’ve never been before,” he asked, “and felt that some part you just… remembered it?”

     I thought of Clearwater. Of the lake, and of the mist drifting between towering pines, and I thought of all the old stories and the quiet roads and the dreams that felt older than memory.

     “Yes,” I said softly.

     He nodded. “I think that people can be like that too.”

     A crow called somewhere deep in the woods, the sound echoing briefly, then fading on the wind.

     “I… don’t understand,” I admitted. 

     “I wouldn’t expect you to,” he said. “I just think,” he went on, “that there are moments in life that arrive before we’re ready for them.”

     He looked toward the water. “People too.”

     The late afternoon light had begun to change, the gold softening into amber, the amber deepening toward copper, the woods glowing around us; maple burning red beneath the dark pines, and the lake reflecting fragments of sky between drifting leaves. 

     Everything just looked so beautiful, or perhaps…

     Maybe I had started seeing it all differently because he was standing there beside me…

     The thought arrived quietly, and I let it stay.

     “So you think that meeting people can be fate?” I asked.

     He smiled. “I think that people like giving things names.”

     “That’s not really an answer, Damien,” I said, eyeing him carefully.

     “No, it isn’t,” he said, eyes boring into me. “And you always prefer direct answers.”

     “No, not exactly,” I countered. “I just prefer understanding.”

     His expression lightened once more. “That’s different.”

     I chuckled a bit. “A little, yeah.” 

     “A great deal different, actually,” he corrected, the smile following his words small, but real. I found myself smiling too.

     It startled me, how easy it had become to do, how natural. 

     “You know,” I pressed, “you say things that sound like you stole them right out of some old book.”

     He looked amused at that. “Do I now?”

     “Constantly, man,” I said, smirking a bit as his lips curled.

     “Well, I do hope you can forgive me that fault then,” he said then, eyes glinting beautifully in the dying light.

     “I get the feeling that you apologize more than you should,” I told him.

     “So I’ve been told before,” he admitted.

     The breeze stirred again. A lock of his dark hair fell across his forehead. For one absurd second, I wanted to reach out and move it.

     I noticed then that the air around us had grown colder, my breath fogging the space before my eyes.

     “So,” he said, “what are you thinking about right now?”

     I hesitated, the honest answer feeling embarrassing.

     You, I wanted to say, but instead I smiled at him. “Just trying to figure you out, is all.” 

     “And how has that been going, Claire?” he asked, his eyes flashing bright, a knowing gleam flecking in the dark centers of them.

     “Oh, very poorly,” I replied, laughing. 

     He laughed too, the sound lingering in the autumn air.

     “I feel that I should warn you,” he said. “I’m not… particularly easy to understand.” 

     “I’ve noticed.”

     “And yet,” he said, his eyes resting upon mine, my heart fluttering beneath the shadow of his gaze, “you keep trying.”

     Something moved quietly through me then, a gentle, growing realization that mystery itself could become a kind of closeness. And that not knowing someone entirely did not always create distance. Sometimes, it invited great wonder.

     The woods had grown darker around us as evening gathered slowly beneath the trees. The first pale star appeared overhead, faint against the fading blue of the sky, and standing there beside the lake, surrounding by the hush of water and the tranquil dance of leaves and the soft kiss of approaching dusk, I became aware of a simple, nagging truth. 

     I liked him.

     Not because he was handsome, though he was, and not because he was mysterious, though mystery followed him like a second shadow. I liked the quiet in him. The gentleness of his dark nature, and I liked the sadness he carried without bitterness; the way he listened intently to everything I had to say, and the way he looked at the world as though it possessed some hidden meanings that were worth protecting. And, perhaps the most unsettling of all—I liked the person I seemed to become when I was standing beside him, quieter and more attentive, as though some restless part of me had finally found a reason to be still.

     “I should probably be going now,” he said suddenly, breaking the enchantment of the moment. “It’s getting dark.”

     “So what?” I said, too quickly, fighting back a chuckle. “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you Damien?” My lips curled at the thought of it. 

     His smile flickered, and I saw that same silver flash in his eyes that I’d seen back at school. “No, Claire,” he said seriously, his whole attitude darkening. “I’m not afraid of the dark.”

     Then his darkness eased, and he reached out, brushing his fingers against my sleeve. It was the subtlest contact, but it sent a strange and unusual chill spilling through me like the first delicate touch right after winter begins to settle.

     “Goodnight, Claire Halloway,” he said, his voice smooth, flowing into my ears like lace.

     And just like that, he was gone in a flash.

     I stayed there for a good while, listening to the river, the hush of the woods, the faint, jilted echo of his footsteps. When I finally turned toward home, the world felt altered. Still and hesitant and expectant, as though something unseen had woken beneath the autumn earth.

     The first true stars were out when I reached the edge of town. The air was much colder now, sharp like a knife, and though I told myself it was only the season changing, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else had begun to move. Something older, drawn by the quiet pull between us. 

**********

The wind had picked up again as I left the woods and crossed into town. It carried the sharp scent of pine and early-autumn and iron, the kind that stung at the back of the throat as I breathed it in. Dusk had deepened into something blue and secret, and the world seemed to have folded in on itself. It was much quieter now, watching; listening.

     My boots crunched loudly on fallen leaves as I drew closer to home. Most of the shops in town were shuttered, closed up early, their windows glowing dimly with warm lamplight, but there was one alley between the old bakery and the old post office that seemed to breathe out at me as I passed by it.

     A slow, rhythmic sound, almost like… gasping.

     I shouldn’t have stopped. I know that I shouldn’t have. Every instinct told me to just keep walking, to get myself home as quickly as I could, and to just pretend that I hadn’t heard anything at all. But the sound had caught me. A low hum, not at all unlike the one that haunts my dreams about the lake, the one that rises and falls with something almost like pleasure and pain intertwined.

     I ignored my instincts, though, and I moved closer. My breath hitched as I peered into the narrow space between the buildings there.

     And there, at the far end of the alley, beneath the flickering glow of a single streetlamp, was a figure.

     Tall, menacing, the figure was bent over another. A woman slumped against the brick. The woman’s eyes were narrowed and void of life, and her head was tilted back in surrender. The figure’s body moved with a strange, unnatural grace, deliberate and tender; otherworldly and dream-like. The figure’s hand rested over the woman’s throat, and for a second I thought the figure had been helping her.

     But then I saw the dark glimmer in the figure’s eyes, their gold-red centers flaring viciously, a strange and alien starvation deep within them, below which I saw pointed teeth winking through the dark at me. I saw the simmer of red against white-hot breath. I suddenly couldn’t move. My nerves buzzed with wild, electric submission, fear sizzling along my senses. My heart stuttered painfully as my vision narrowed to the quiet, sinister curve of the figure’s jaw, the impossible stillness of it; the faltering cone of the street lamp above that caught the scent of the blood that I saw dripping from the corner of the figure’s mouth.

     The figure’s eyes glazed silver, burning and wild as they met mine, and then that bloodied mouth opened wide, where something glinted again, stained crimson and oozing, and then a feral hiss echoed out of the shadows at me.

     Something in me broke just then, my paralysis shattered as my legs carried me fast. I dared not to look behind me as I ran, the fear of seeing that menacing figure pursuing me, keeping my eyes wide and alert as I sprinted all the way home. My heart was frantic, pounding hard, and my thoughts had become twisted, snapping and pulling in all directions.

     I threw myself through the front door, ignoring a tall silhouette in the trees just beyond the edge of the house, and then I slammed the front door shut behind me, locking it, and then I scurried up the stairs to the bedroom, where I crawled into bed. I pulled the covers over me while I tried to ignore the voice in my head that was telling me that what I had seen had been real.

     I don’t know how long it took for me to finally fall asleep, but the last thing that I saw was a flash of white, sharp and bloodied, before the darkness swallowed me whole.

Part Two

In Bloom COMING SOON!!!