Rowan didn't stay that night.
He left without another word, his shoulders rigid, jaw clenched, eyes shadowed by something too old for his young face.
Elena stood at the edge of the dock long after he disappeared into the trees, painting still in her hands, wind tugging at her hair like the sea wanted to claim her too.
She didn't sleep.
Instead, she sat in front of the fireplace, the painting propped against a chair, a blanket over her knees and questions unraveling inside her.
Who was Rowan's brother?
Why did he paint her family's dock?
Why did Rowan lie about the artist?
And why did her heart ache like it had known his sorrow long before tonight?
The next morning, she found her way to the town library—small, old, the kind of place that smelled like salt and forgotten memories. The librarian, a silver-haired woman named Maisie, greeted her with a warm smile.
"I'm looking for anything on the West family," Elena asked. "Or the Hartleys. Particularly anything connected to local artists."
Maisie raised a brow. "You might be the first person to ask that in years. Wait here."
She returned with a slim, dusty folder and laid it gently on the counter.
Inside: a faded newspaper clipping from fifteen years ago.
"Local Teen Lost at Sea: Matthew West, age seventeen, presumed drowned following storm off Evermare coast. Known artist and recluse, survived by younger brother Rowan West, and their father, Captain Elias West."
Elena's fingers trembled. Matthew. M.H.
The painting wasn't unfinished—it was incomplete. As if he'd meant to return to it. As if he couldn't.
"I remember him," Maisie said softly, peering over her glasses. "That boy had more talent in his fingers than most see in a lifetime. Used to paint down by the Hartley cliff. Said the sea spoke louder there."
Elena left the library with more questions than answers. But one truth pressed itself into her ribs like the weight of a wave:
Rowan was hurting.
And something about that painting—about her—was tangled in the threads of a grief neither of them had fully touched.
That evening, she found him at the dock again, sitting this time, legs hanging over the edge like he was tempting the sea to take him too.
"I went to the library," she said quietly. "I know about Matthew."
Rowan didn't move. "Then you know why I didn't want to talk about him."
"You lied about the painting."
"I didn't lie. I protected it."
Elena sat beside him, the wooden planks cold beneath her. "He painted this place. My grandmother's cliff. He must have known her."
Rowan's jaw tensed. "He did. Too well."
Her breath caught. "What do you mean?"
"He was in love with someone he wasn't supposed to be. A woman who disappeared the same week he died. No one ever found her. Some people think the storm took her too. Others think… she ran."
Elena stared at him. "My grandmother?"
"I don't know," Rowan said. "But that painting? It's not just art. It's a memory. A message. Maybe even a warning."
Their shoulders brushed in the darkness.
The wind held its breath.
"You're not like him," Rowan said softly, after a long silence.
"No?"
"You don't run when it hurts."
Elena turned to him, close enough to see the tired grief in his eyes, the hunger he tried so hard to hide.
"I don't know how to run anymore," she whispered.
And for the first time, Rowan reached for her hand—tentative, unsure, like she might break.
But she didn't.
She held on.
To him.
To the mystery.
To something beautiful beginning in the wreckage of what they'd lost.