Page 1 of You Found Me in the Dark
1
WREN
The baseball field always looked better in the dark. The bleachers were just a set of aluminum rows behind Pine Harbor High. They sat beneath a washed-out night sky and two old field lights that barely did their job. They weren’t bright, not really, but they were enough to make me feel safe.
It was just past ten. The sky was a clear, dark blue, and the air was cold enough to see your breath, but still warm enough that bundling up wasn’t necessary. This is what made a northern Michigan spring night perfect.
I only came out here when things got bad in my head. When the walls at home felt like they were pressing in, or my thoughts started piling up faster than I could outrun them. The field was only two blocks from the house, tucked behind my old high school. I used to come here occasionally after everything happened, and tonight I just needed somewhere quiet.
I climbed up to the second row and settled onto the cold bleacher. Putting my headphones in and pulling my hood up, I began to relax. My arms folded across my chest while my legsrested on the bleacher below me, crossed at the ankle. The music in my ears was sad but calming. I shut my eyes and just listened. Mostly, the songs were about loving someone who never actually saw who you were, or they were classic break-up songs. They made me feel like I wasn’t the only person quietly breaking apart.
The song playing through my headphones always broke me.
The tears came—just a few, like a cracked dam behind tired eyes. I never cried in front of people. I never had the energy for that kind of pity, that’s why I came here.
I didn’t even hear him at first. I was too wrapped up in the past to acknowledge the present. I only noticed when the bleachers creaked, one loud groan of metal shifting under weight. My heart jumped. I ripped one earbud out, my head snapping toward the sound.
“Wren?” he said, his voice low. I squinted, not trusting what I saw.
It was him. Of course, it was him.
Reed Whitmore, my older brother’s best friend. He was an asshole. Too blunt, too cold, too distant. What the hell was he doing here?
He didn’t sit close, just a few feet away in the same row. He wore a dark T-shirt and windbreaker with sweatpants, the kind of effortless, thrown-together look that somehow still made him look annoyingly good. The collar of his windbreaker was low enough to reveal the black lines of ink that stretched up his neck and fell right below his jaw. His tattooed hands were folded between his legs, with his forearms resting on his knees. His hair was longer on top than on the sides. It looked like he had been running his hands through it all night. He was thirty-one but could easily pass for twenty-five. Reed’s eyes were fixed on the empty field like he had come here for his own reasons.
He didn’t say anything else. Just sat there, quiet. Watching the field like it had all the answers he needed. Like, him showing up hadn’t just tilted my whole world sideways.
“You always cry alone in baseball stands, or is this a one-time thing?” he asked, his voice quiet and teasing, still not looking at me.
I let out a soft laugh, but it sounded more like a scoff. I sniffed, wiping under my eyes quickly, cursing the way my voice trembled when I spoke. “Didn’t know this spot was so popular this late at night.”
“It normally isn’t. That’s why I come here,” he said, just under his breath.
We sat in silence after that. Not awkward. Not exactly comfortable, either.
I glanced his way. “You’re not gonna ask me what’s wrong or why I’m here?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think you are ready to tell me. If you were, you would’ve already started talking.”
I stared at him.
God, he saw right through me. Was I really that transparent?
“Do you always show up at places like some emotionally stunted Batman?” I asked, masking my sadness with sarcasm.
He smirked, a soft thing that didn’t quite reach his eyes. We sat for a while longer, not saying anything. The sky darkened, stars poking through like it was daring me to look up.
Just as I started to get lost in my thoughts again, Reed mumbled, “C’mon.”
I blinked. “What?”
He stood and wiped his hands on his sweatpants. “You look like you don’t wanna go home yet. So, fuck it. Don’t.”
I hesitated. “Where would we even go?”
