Page 7 of Remain
Mrs. Donnelly’s hands are on my face before I can react, cool and familiar, like she’s checking to make sure I’m real and not a mirage.
“Look at you,” she says, smiling wide and searching. “All grown up.”
I smile because it’s easier than explaining what she’s really seeing. The years. The leaving. The way I came back just often enough to convince everyone I hadn’t fully disappeared. She’s a friend of my mother’s. They would grab tea together and often. She’s the kind of friend where time doesn’t exist, you simply pick right up where you left off, every time.
“Are you staying?” she digs in immediately, the way Pineview people do, as though the answer might shift the entire season.
“Just for a few days.”
She hums, unconvinced, eyes lingering on my face like she’s reading something I didn’t realize I was still writing. “That’s how it always starts.”
I promise coffee. Promise soon. Promise things I know how to leave vague. Then I escape, heart thudding, moving deeper into the square before I can talk myself out of it.
Pineview doesn’t ease you in. It waits.
And then?—
There he is. I knew I would see him the second I stepped onto Main Street.
Erik Beaumont stands near the massive Christmas tree at the center of the square, one hand braced against the railing, the other gesturing as he laughs at something a kid in an oversized helmet says. The lights overhead catch in his hair, and dusts his shoulders with gold.
My breath stutters.
Erik was my constant once. A lifetime ago. He was my north star. The boy who knew where I was before I did. The one who sat beside me on the hood of his truck at eighteen, talking about futures we were too young to understand. Hegave me many firsts. Some of them still flood my memory from time to time.
This man though, standing before me, is different.
He’s broader now and solid in a way that has a everything to do with the gym and years of using his body for real work. His shoulders stretch the seams of his coat like it’s been broken in by him, not tailored to impress. There’s a ruggedness to his face, stubble along his jaw, faint lines at the corners of his blue eyes that speak to laughter earned the hard way, to a life actually lived.
His confidence isn’t performative or loud. It doesn’t need polish. It sits on him naturally, the way good posture does, grounded and undeniable. He’s nothing like the men in New York City who broadcast themselves before you’ve even learned their last names.
His brown hair is just long enough that my fingers itch to test the texture, just short enough that I know he keeps it trimmed out of habit, not vanity. He’s a no-fuss kind of man with clean lines, practical choices, ensuring that nothing is wasted. Confidence looks less like armor on him and more like a second skin.
I remember him as the handsome, kind jock, the one who held doors open and made sure everyone got home safe. He’d already had a body people noticed back then, all muscle and easy strength, and the thought of what time has done to it now lands low and torturous in my chest.
Erik doesn’t announce anything. He doesn’t try. He just exists and that somehow, makes him impossible to look away from.
I heavily consider turning around and slipping back into the crowd, putting on my best acting performance like I didn’t just stare at him.
Too late.
He turns to face me and our eyes meet.
I would never forget those eyes.
For a heartbeat, the noise around us fades - the music dulls, the laughter softens, the scrape of skates on ice disappears. My pulse roars in my ears.
Then he smiles.
Not surprised or guarded like I anticipated. It’s just warm. It feels like this moment makes sense to him, maybe he hasn’t spent the years narrowly missing me because I made sure of it.
“Savannah.”
My name sounds different in his voice. Lower. Familiar in a way that makes my nerves spike instead of settle.
“Erik,” I reply, proud of myself for managing the word at all. Any word.
His gaze drops briefly, cataloging me, taking in my coat, my boots, the way I’m standing like I might bolt.