Page 79 of Saddle and Scent
Because I need to understand.
I need to know who and why and how this secret has been sitting between us like a landmine for a decade.
"We don't know who in town sent the threats," Callum continues, his voice heavy with old frustration and fear. "They were anonymous, but specific. Details about her schedule, about places she went, about things only someone watching her closely would know."
Someone was watching me.
When I was sixteen and thought the world was safe because I had three protectors who would never let anything bad happen to me. Someone was paying enough attention to know my routines, my habits, my vulnerabilities.
The thought makes my skin crawl.
"The last straw was when she almost drowned," he says, and I can hear the pain in his voice even through my shock.
The drowning.
I remember the drowning.
Sort of.
The details have always been fuzzy, dreamlike, more impression than clear memory.
I'd fallen through thin ice at the quarry during what was supposed to be a harmless winter walk.
The boys had pulled me out, gotten me to safety, but I'd always assumed it was just an accident.
Bad luck and bad timing and the kind of thing that happens when teenagers think they're invincible.
"She knows that almost happened," the doctor says carefully. "But it was when you were younger, wasn't it? An accident?"
That's what I thought.
Or at least what everyone told me.
An accident that could have happened to anyone.
"It was obviously intentional," Callum says, and the words hit me like a physical blow. "Juniper doesn't remember the incident clearly—head trauma from hitting the ice—but we found evidence afterward. The ice had been deliberately weakened in the exact spot where she liked to sit and think."
Deliberately weakened.
Someone tried to kill me?
When I was sixteen years old, someone in this town tried to murder me, and I never knew.
I never knew because the boys who saved me decided to carry that knowledge alone.
Decided to protect me from the truth by sacrificing everything we had.
"We thought pushing her away would keep her safe," Callum continues, his voice breaking slightly. "We didn't know it would mean she'd literally leave and never come back. We thought... we thought if we could just get her to maintain some distance until we figured out who was threatening her..."
They thought they were saving me…that breaking my heart was the price of keeping me alive.
The room falls silent as his revelation settles over us like a heavy blanket.
The truth finally spoken aloud after a decade of carrying it alone.
And I don't know how to feel about any of it.
Relief that they never stopped wanting me.
