vanishing Point

Episode 2: Vanishing Point

The ocean had a rhythm Jeaner hadn’t known she needed. Each morning, she woke to the whisper of waves brushing the shoreline, like the world gently urging her to breathe again.

Three days had passed since she arrived in Brightport.

Three days of silence.

No calls. No messages. No Kellan. No Arielle.

She had turned her phone off the moment she boarded the train. Not out of fear, but because she didn’t want to hear apologies, explanations, or worse—excuses dressed as love.

This wasn’t running away. This was disappearing on purpose.

She spent most of her time walking along the coast, sketchbook in hand. Her drawings used to be delicate and romantic—now they were raw. Angry lines. Sharp silhouettes. A woman screaming into the wind. Another curled into herself like a dying flower.

Still, it was something. Pain, at least, meant she could still feel.

The innkeeper, Mrs. Tilly, had started leaving little extras on her breakfast tray—honeycomb, fresh bread, handpicked strawberries.

“Artists need strength,” she said one morning, without asking anything more.

Jeaner gave her a faint smile. Gratitude without words.

---

On the fourth day, the sea led her to the docks.

Brightport was a quiet fishing town, its heartbeat slow but steady. She watched boats come and go, the harbor filled with shouts and laughter from people who had nothing to prove to the world. They just existed—honest and weather-worn.

That’s when she saw him.

A man, probably in his early thirties, standing alone at the edge of the pier, checking the nets on a small boat. His dark hair was tousled by salt and sun, and he moved with the kind of quiet purpose that comes from solitude, not loneliness.

He didn’t glance her way.

Good.

Jeaner wasn’t looking for conversation. But fate had other plans.

As she turned to walk back, a sketch blew from her book, caught in the wind and fluttering down to the water’s edge. She chased it, but it was the stranger who caught it first—plucked from the air like a reflex.

He glanced at the drawing: a pair of hands gripping a broken heart like shattered glass.

He looked up, and for the first time, their eyes met.

“You dropped this,” he said, voice low but steady.

Jeaner reached out, avoiding eye contact. “Thanks.”

He paused, then handed it over without comment.

“I’m Rowan,” he added after a beat, not pressing for her name.

She hesitated, then quietly replied, “Jean.”

It wasn’t a lie. Just not the whole truth.

Rowan nodded once. “You draw pain well.”

She blinked. “That’s not exactly a compliment.”

“Wasn’t meant to be.” He motioned toward the sea. “Just an observation. Pain leaves deeper lines than joy.”

Jeaner wasn’t sure what to say to that. So she said nothing.

He didn’t seem to mind.

---

The next morning, she found herself near the docks again. She told herself it was the sea she wanted, not the company. But when she spotted Rowan fixing the same boat, a small flicker of familiarity lit in her chest.

They didn’t speak that day, only exchanged a nod. Still, it felt like something—something stable.

Over the next week, they crossed paths more often. Sometimes he’d bring her fresh tangerines from the market. Other times, he simply sat on the edge of the pier while she sketched a rusted anchor or the old lighthouse beyond the cliffs.

No questions. No assumptions.

One day, she finally asked, “What do you do?”

He didn’t look up from the knot he was tying. “Fix things. Boats, mostly. Sometimes people.”

Jeaner smiled faintly. “Which one am I?”

He met her gaze evenly. “Still deciding.”

---

That night, Jeaner opened her sketchbook and drew something new: a man standing on the edge of the sea, back turned to the world, yet rooted like he belonged to the horizon.

She titled it “Anchor.”

She didn’t know what Rowan’s story was. But she didn’t need to.

Not yet.

All she knew was that for the first time since she left Verona Hills, she didn’t feel like she was drowning.

And maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t lost anymore.

Just... not found yet.

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