Samantha didn't accuse him outright.

  She never did.

  Instead, she asked questions that sounded like concern and made statements that wore the disguise of observation—carefully placed, lightly spoken, impossible to argue with without sounding ungrateful.

  "Have you noticed," she said one evening, standing at the window of the London flat, watching traffic crawl below, "how things fall apart when you get close to people?"

  Michael paused mid-motion, a glass of water in his hand. He waited for the rest of the sentence, but she let it hang there, heavy as fog.

  "What do you mean?" he asked.

  She turned, eyes soft, almost sad. "I just worry about you. Whitby, for example. Every time you go back, something goes wrong. Stress spikes. Problems resurface. You come back worse."

  He frowned. "That's not—"

  "I'm not blaming you," she interrupted gently. "I'm just saying patterns matter."

  Patterns.

  The word lodged itself in his chest.

  At work, small mistakes began to feel catastrophic. A supplier delayed a shipment. A dish didn't land the way he wanted it to. A staff member resigned unexpectedly. Each disruption echoed Samantha's voice in his head.

  Things fall apart around you.

  When he called Willow—once, late, half-drunk and desperate for a sound that wasn't accusation—Samantha noticed the shift in his posture immediately.

  "She keeps pulling you back," she said afterward. "I don't think she realises how much damage that does."

  Damage.

  He stared at the floor, heart racing. "She's not doing anything."

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Samantha stepped closer, voice lowering. "You don't mean to hurt people either. That's the tragedy of it."

  The idea took root slowly, dangerously. That he was a source of chaos. That anyone who loved him would suffer for it. That maybe distance wasn't abandonment—it was protection.

  In Whitby, Willow stood at the edge of the harbour wall, coat pulled tight against the wind, watching gulls circle in uneven arcs. She had felt the shift weeks ago—the thinning of his presence, the way his warmth had begun to feel far away even when he was still physically near.

  She didn't know what words were being fed to him.

  But she recognised the shape of the lie.

  It was the same one her father used. The same one that kept her mother silent for years.

  If you leave, things will be better.

  She turned back toward the lights of Fields of Waves, toward the oven she kept burning not for customers but for him. For the man who once stood beside her and taught her how to bank a fire so it would last through the night.

  Misfortune, she knew, didn't follow people.

  It followed those who were taught to believe they deserved it.

  Willow's Diary

  They are teaching you to shrink

  by calling it care.

  If loving you is dangerous,

  why does my life feel safer

  every time you walk into the room?

  Poem — The Lie

  You are not the storm.

  You are the one

  who keeps the light on

  when it hits.

  If they call you disaster,

  remember—

  only the guilty

  need someone else to blame.