Chapter Three

Jules' POV 

The dashboard clock pulsed crimson in the dark, its digits stubbornly flicking towards midnight. The road stretched before me, a black ribbon winding through the emptiness, just a few miles short of Nana's farm. I pulled over, my hands trembling on the steering wheel, the engine's hum falling silent. For a moment, I sat there, eyes wet with a sadness that blurred the headlights into soft, glowing halos. Nana's questions would pierce me, gentle as they might seem. I couldn't bear them—not now, not with everything I'd lost.

I didn't choose to move. My body simply rose from the driver's seat, as if it had a memory of its own, a rhythm I no longer controlled. The fields called to me. The same fields where Adam and I had kissed for the first time—back when the world felt weightless, back when his hand in mine seemed to make everything glow. The air, thick with night, greeted me with a kind of emptiness I hadn't anticipated. It was louder than the quiet itself, like the earth had been waiting for me to return only to mock me with its stillness.

I fell into the grass, damp and cool, the blades sticking to my skin. My arm ached where the angry red marks from that fight—what fight?—stood out under the moonlight. I glanced down at my stomach. Not rounded yet, but already there was a heaviness I couldn't name. A weight more than physical, growing, pressing, reminding me of what I carried within me. A life. A child. His child.

A laugh caught in my throat—bitter, dry. "What now?" I whispered, my words disappearing into the night. "What am I supposed to do?" My voice trembled and broke as if even the night didn't want to hold my sorrow.

The tears came hot and fast, running down my cheeks. I wrapped my arms around my belly, feeling the faintest flutter of something—not quite hope, but not despair either. "I loved him," I whispered into the darkness, my voice soft, cracking. "I loved him so much. Your daddy, I loved him more than anything... but he didn't love me back. Not like I thought he did."

The sobs stopped suddenly, overtaken by a fierceness I didn't know I had. "Stupid," I spat the word into the silence, my chest tight with a rage that burned as hot as the pain. "God, Jules, you idiot. How could you fall for him—just some city boy who left you behind? And now look at you." I glared at the sky as if it, too, was mocking me. "Alone. With a baby. And nothing but a damn fool to show for it."

But then, beneath the anger, there was something else. A flicker. Small, barely perceptible, like the glow of a match in the wind. It was defiance—a reminder that I was still here. Still breathing. This baby inside me didn't care about Adam. This baby didn't care about the past or the hurt or the empty spaces Adam had left behind. It just needed me.

For the first time, something like hope began to thread its way through the sadness, delicate as it was. I wasn't sure what tomorrow would bring. I didn't even know what the next hour held. But I knew I wasn't alone—not really. Someone needed me. And that small, fragile truth felt like a lifeline.

I sat in that field for what felt like hours, staring at nothing and everything, my thoughts spinning slowly, like leaves caught in a lazy current. Time seemed to stretch and fold in on itself. The future I had once imagined, the one with Adam—gone. But a new one, unfamiliar and uncertain, began to form. It scared me. But it also stirred something in me. Strength. A strength I hadn't realized I'd lost until now.

The car felt different when I slid back into the driver's seat. I wasn't crying anymore. Instead, there was a quiet, steady resolve, like a still lake before the storm. The engine rumbled to life, but before I could pull away, the night cracked open.

A wail—high and broken—sliced through the silence, unnatural, like a howl of some wounded animal. My heart seized as I looked ahead. The sky was glowing orange, a thin ribbon of smoke twisting into the stars. The closer I got, the brighter it became, until I could see the flames licking the sides of a house. My house.

Panic seized me, and before I knew it, I was running, my feet pounding the ground as the fire roared louder in my ears. The heat wrapped itself around me, suffocating. Sheriff Mike grabbed me, pulling me back as I tried to fight against him, my lungs burning, my skin stinging with the heat.

"Where's Nana?!" I screamed, my voice cracking like the wood that splintered in the blaze. I tore at Mike's hands, my heart thudding in my chest, a frantic rhythm that drowned out everything else. "Mike! Where is she?!"

He didn't answer. Not at first. His eyes held something—something I didn't understand, something that made my blood run cold.

"No," I whispered. "Please, no..."

I couldn't hear the rest of what he said. Words tumbled out of his mouth, but they seemed distant, like they came from underwater. "Didn't make it out... too late... we tried." My knees buckled. I couldn't breathe.

Then, there was the man. A tall figure in a dark suit, his presence cold and sharp, like the edge of a blade. He said my name—Julia Rose Arthur—and his voice chilled me to the bone. His hand clamped around mine, hard and unrelenting.

Panic clawed at me. "What—what are you doing?"

"You're under arrest," he said, his voice devoid of any emotion. "You have the right to remain silent."

My mind fractured, pieces of thought splintering in a thousand directions. "No!" I screamed, my voice raw, desperate. "I didn't... I didn't do anything!"

They shoved me into the back of the police car. I called out for Mike, pleading, begging, but he didn't look back. And as the car pulled away, the house—my childhood, my family—burned in the rearview mirror, the red lights blurring into the flames, until everything was ash.