🚂 THE WINDOW THAT WOULDN’T LOOK AWAY

Jessa Lane pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the train window, watching the town she grew up in shrink into a watercolor smear. The early morning light was soft enough to feel merciful, turning the passing trees into ink strokes and the roads into silver ribbons disappearing behind her. She hadn’t meant to leave this soon. She hadn’t meant to leave like this at all. But here she was at six forty-three in the morning, fleeing before she could second-guess herself.

The train hummed with that low, steady vibration that felt almost like a heartbeat. It reminded her she was alive despite the numbness settling in her chest. People talked quietly around her or scrolled through their phones with the blank-faced dedication of seasoned commuters. The air smelled faintly like old upholstery and station coffee, and the world outside flickered by in a hypnotic blur.

She mouthed the words she hadn’t said last night. They ghosted her lips like invisible regret.

I should’ve stayed longer.

I should’ve told him the truth.

I shouldn’t have run.

Beside her, in the seat she bought but didn’t deserve, sat an empty space where her best friend—her almost-something, her maybe-everything—should’ve been. Rowan Hayes. The boy she grew up with. The man she’d accidentally fallen for. He had offered to drive her to the station, but Jessa had slipped out before dawn, leaving a note in crooked handwriting that said she didn’t want goodbyes to make it harder.

It was a lie, of course. Goodbyes weren’t the problem. The truth was.

The train lurched slightly, and her reflection trembled in the window. She looked tired. She looked older than twenty-six should look. She looked like someone carrying a thousand unsent messages in her pockets.

This is for the best, she told herself.

Though even she didn’t believe it.

Two Days Earlier

Jessa had been sitting on Rowan’s front porch, her fingers curled around a mug of tea that had long gone cold. Rowan stood in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame, his hair unbrushed and his T-shirt wrinkled in the way she found obnoxiously heart-wrenching.

“So that’s it?” he asked. “You’re really leaving again?”

Jessa tried to smile, but it wobbled like a loose wheel. “Yeah. The job starts Monday. And the apartment’s ready. I can’t… stall.”

“You could if you wanted to.”

Her breath hitched. “Rowan—”

He stopped her with a raise of his hand, then sank into the chair beside her. “I’m not trying to trap you. I just… I thought this time would be different.”

She knew what he meant. She’d grown up here, left for college, come back, left again, returned after her mom got sick, left for a failed relationship, returned after it fell apart, left for work, came back after losing the job, and now she was about to leave again like a comet refusing to stay gravity-bound.

Rowan was the only thing that remained constant through every orbit.

“Look,” she said gently, “I’m not good at the whole staying-put thing. You know that.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, “but I thought maybe you’d be good at the whole staying-with-me thing.”

Her heart jumped, startled and stupidly hopeful.

He stared at her, eyes burning with something she had tried very hard for years to ignore. “I’m in love with you,” he added simply, as if he hadn’t just detonated her world.

She didn’t speak for a long moment. The porch felt too small. The town felt too small. Her lungs felt too small.

“You shouldn’t be,” she whispered.

“Not how that works.”

She stood up too fast. The mug rattled on the table.

“Rowan, I— I need to think. I need space. I leave Friday.”

He nodded once, jaw tight. “Then think fast.”

The Night Before the Train

Jessa wandered through her childhood room, brushing her fingers across the old posters she never took down and the pile of books she never returned. Her suitcase sat on the bed like a silent judge.

Downstairs, Rowan waited. He’d offered—again—to drive her. She almost said yes.

Almost.

But when she reached the bottom of the staircase and saw him standing there with his keys in hand and a smile that was trying so hard to be brave, she panicked.

The walls felt like they were folding in on her. The truth felt like it was standing in the middle of the room with a megaphone.

She couldn’t say goodbye. Not when she finally understood what she wanted and was terrified she couldn’t keep it.

So she lied. She told him she’d call a rideshare. She told him she’d be fine.

Rowan’s eyes said he didn’t believe her for a second.

“Jessa,” he murmured, “don’t disappear on me this time.”

She didn’t respond. She just gave him a quick hug, mumbled something about an early morning, and fled.

She didn’t see the way his face collapsed a little after the door closed.

Back on the Train

A tinny intercom voice crackled overhead, announcing their next stop. Jessa blinked and pulled herself away from the spiraling memories. Outside, the landscape opened into fields that shimmered with dawn frost. Birds fluttered up from a fence line in a messy, startled arc.

She pulled Rowan’s note from her pocket. He’d slipped it into her coat at some point without her noticing.

If you go, go knowing I’ll still be here.

But I hope you choose to stay.

For once.

For something real.

For us.

Her breath stung on the way out.

She could still get off at the next stop, take a train back home, show up at his door and tell him—

What?

That she loved him too?

That she was ready to stop running?

That she was terrified but willing?

She hadn’t even admitted it to herself until now.

She pressed her forehead to the window again, the cold grounding her unraveling thoughts. The frost outside was starting to melt where the sun hit it, turning everything soft and shimmering, like the world was giving itself permission to thaw.

Maybe she could, too.

Her hand trembled as she reached for her phone. She typed a message, hesitated, deleted it, typed another, deleted that too. Nothing felt right. Nothing felt big enough for the gravity of this moment.

The train slowed. The brakes hissed. A small station slid into view, quiet and unassuming. If she stepped off here, she could still turn around.

Her heart hammered.

She stood. Then sat. Then stood again because sitting felt like suffocating.

The doors opened with a soft chime. A few passengers shuffled out. A few shuffled in.

Jessa’s pulse roared in her ears.

Then—just as the doors were about to close—she heard a voice.

A familiar one. A too-familiar one.

“Jess!”

Her head whipped toward the sound.

Rowan stood on the platform, breathless, hair a mess, coat crooked, gripping a paper cup of coffee in one shaking hand. Snow clung to his eyebrows like glitter.

“What—” she choked, pushing past the woman in the aisle, stumbling toward the door. “Rowan?!”

He offered a crooked smile. “You didn’t really think I’d let you leave without a fight, did you?”

She stared at him, stunned. “How did you—”

“I guessed. You always take the early train when you’re scared. And you were scared, Jess. I could tell.”

Something inside her cracked open like a thawing river.

“So,” he said gently, “are you still running?”

She looked at him. Really looked at him. The boy who had become her anchor without her asking. The man who had waited for her even when she didn’t deserve it.

“No,” she whispered. “Not anymore.”

The doors chimed again.

She stepped off the train.

Rowan dropped the coffee so he could catch her when she threw herself into his arms.

The passengers watched. The conductor watched. The sun watched. The frost watched. The whole universe paused to make room for the moment two people finally made the same decision at the same time.

Hours later, long after the train had vanished down the tracks, Jessa sat in Rowan’s truck watching the sun stretch across the horizon.

They weren’t in a hurry anymore. They didn’t have to be.

Her head rested against his shoulder as she gazed out the window, the world outside no longer rushing past but unfolding slowly, beautifully, like a story she hadn’t realized she’d been writing all along.

And that was where the real journey finally began.