A Sea of Unspoken Things

by Adrienne Young

There was no world without Johnny.

But there was no denying that leaving Six Rivers and never looking back had come at a cost.

In the end, the price I’d paid had been giving up Johnny.

We were connected in places that no one could see, in ways that I still didn’t understand.

Ooooo

And I’d also been wrong about the lengths I’d go to protect him. In the end, Johnny wasn’t the only one with blood on his hands.

When I blinked, Johnny was gone.

I’d convinced myself that I was being paranoid about Ben snooping in Johnny’s cabin, but the way he avoided my eyes now made that sense of disquiet resurface. Ben wasn’t comfortable around me, and I didn’t know why.

“What if he is Johnny’s?”

“You think you’ll ever leave again?” I asked. Micah shook his head. “No. I’m made of this place.”

I’d learned the hard way that wishing things were different only drove deeper how unfair it was that they weren’t.