The painting wouldn't stop looking at her.
Elena had moved it into the cottage's tiny sitting room, propping it up near the window so the light hit it just right. But something about it felt… off. Not just the imagery—though the longer she looked, the more haunting it became—but the surface itself.
As if the painting held more than color.
More than grief.
She ran her fingers lightly over the canvas, careful not to smudge the aged oils. Her thumb caught on a small bump—so subtle it could have been nothing. But her instincts whispered otherwise.
She retrieved a magnifying glass from her art kit and angled the light.
That's when she saw it.
Faint. Almost invisible beneath the darker strokes.
A second layer of brushwork—concealed letters.
Hidden in the waves.
She reached for her pencil and paper and began to trace the shapes.
> L—O—C—K
T—H—E
L—I—G—H—T
Her heart stuttered.
Lock the light?
She stared at the phrase. It sounded like a warning. Or a clue.
Maybe both.
---
That night, she didn't sleep. Again.
Instead, she waited for Rowan.
When he arrived just past midnight, wind in his hair, moonlight glinting off his eyes, she was ready.
"I found something," she said, pulling him inside.
He followed her to the painting without a word, jaw clenched the way it always did when the past tried to rise.
She pointed. "There's writing beneath the surface. Your brother hid it."
Rowan bent closer, squinting. When he saw the faint strokes for himself, his breath caught.
"Lock the light…" he whispered.
"You know what it means?"
He pulled away slowly, expression unreadable. "It was something our mother used to say. When the storms came."
Elena tilted her head. "Your mother?"
"She used to tell us to 'lock the light in our hearts' when we were afraid. Said the ocean couldn't drown a soul if it still had a flame inside."
His voice cracked at the edges, raw and real.
"She died when we were young," he said. "But Matthew… he never forgot her words."
Elena touched his arm, gently. "What if he meant it literally? What if something's hidden—something tied to that phrase?"
Rowan looked at her then. Not like she was a stranger. Not like she was just a girl on the cliff. But like she was his lifeline.
"I don't know what you've stirred up, Elena," he said, voice low, "but you're waking ghosts in this town."
She smiled, just slightly. "Maybe it's time someone did."
---
Later, when the fire had burned low and the wind howled like it remembered names, Rowan stayed.
He didn't say much.
But when Elena curled beside him on the worn old couch, and his hand found hers under the blanket, she realized something had shifted between them.
Not just proximity.
Not just comfort.
Something permanent.
And somewhere out there, beneath layers of paint and memory, Matthew West was still whispering—
"Lock the light."
---