Thoughts of Junie

Junie|Thoughts of June – The House at the End of The Street; Chapter 2

The sirens were the first thing she heard—loud, wailing, urgent. Then came the voices, muffled at first, like someone speaking underwater. They grew louder, clearer, until they echoed all around her.

She was standing at the base of a staircase. Old wood. Familiar. But dread wrapped around her like a second skin. Her heart beat so violently in her chest she thought it might burst.

The air was thick, heavy, and smelled like metal.

Her eyes lifted—hesitantly—toward the top of the stairs. Shadows twisted and danced beneath a single flickering bulb. Then she looked down.

Her white blouse was soaked. Crimson. Thick and wet.

She staggered backward, breath caught in her throat. Was it hers? She didn’t know. She didn’t feel pain. She didn’t feel anything except the cold coil of fear tightening in her stomach.

A blood-curdling scream shattered the silence.

It came from above.

Before she could move, the scream was followed by a deafening bang—so loud it echoed through the floorboards and into her bones. She fell, her legs giving out beneath her.

Bang.

Darkness swallowed her.

Bang.

She blinked, and the courtroom came into focus.

“Miss Prescot, please call your next witness,” the judge commanded, his gavel still vibrating from the last strike.

A tall, sharply dressed woman in a navy pantsuit stood with the kind of grace that came from years of practice. She handed a file to the judge, her expression unreadable.

“Your Honor,” she said crisply, “the prosecution would like to call the victim, Miss Harper Grace, to the stand.”

Harper rose slowly. Her legs were trembling. She could feel every pair of eyes on her. Her throat was dry, her pulse pounding.

Stacey Ann Prescot’s voice rang out. Smooth, calculated, like a scalpel cutting flesh.

“Miss Grace, when did you first return?”

Harper swallowed hard. “It was a cold, foggy day… April 24th. That was the day.” Her fingers fidgeted with the bracelet on her wrist—a thin silver chain with a tiny charm. A gift. From him.

“When I moved back into my parents’ house,” she continued, scanning the room. Faces blurred. Some were sympathetic. Others judgmental. But all were watching. Waiting.

“What do you recall about that day?”

Stacey’s tone was detached, but Harper knew what she was doing. She wasn’t asking for the truth. She was carving out a version of it. One that fit her narrative.

“My childhood bedroom was left untouched,” Harper began, voice growing stronger. “As if I had just stepped out yesterday. But it had been years. Six years, to be exact.”

She paused, glancing at the judge.

“The town hadn’t changed. But I had.”

Stacey cocked her head. “And what made you want to return home?”

There it was. The trap in silk.

Harper looked down at her bracelet again. Then up. “My daughter,” she said softly. “I wanted her to know stability. And I needed… I needed a place to start over.”

The gavel slammed again—

BANG.

Harper shot up in bed, gasping.

Her skin was slick with sweat, the sheets tangled around her legs like restraints. Her heart thundered in her chest, throat tight, breath shallow.

It was just a dream.

But it had felt too real.

She kicked the sheets away and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The old wooden floors were cool beneath her bare feet. Without bothering to grab a robe, she padded to the window and opened it—stale summer air washing over her face.

Not enough.

She needed out.

Harper pushed open the back door and stepped into the quiet of the night. The moon was veiled behind a curtain of clouds. Crickets chirped lazily, and the scent of honeysuckle clung to the breeze.

She wrapped her arms around herself and let the chill settle on her skin, grounding her.

Then she saw him.

Phoenix.

Leaning against the fence, half-lit by the porch light. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes… they were locked on her like he’d been waiting all night.

A cigarette burned low in his fingers, glowing like a firefly in the dark.

“You always sneak out of bed like that?” he asked, voice low and gravelly.

Harper froze. Her lips parted to say something, but nothing came.

Because there he was—danger and desire bundled in the same body. The man from her past, now standing under her present’s porch light like a memory come alive.

And suddenly, she wasn’t cold anymore.

Phoenix didn’t move from the fence. He just stood there, one boot crossed over the other, cigarette dangling from his fingers like he had all the time in the world.

Harper took a few tentative steps toward him, barefoot on the cool grass. She didn’t say anything at first. She didn’t have to.

“You always walk around half-dressed in the middle of the night?” he asked, smoke curling from his lips.

“You always lurk in other people’s backyards?”

He gave a quiet laugh. “Touché.”

They stood in silence for a beat. Long enough for the breeze to rustle the leaves, for the weight of the past to settle between them like fog.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Harper said finally.

Phoenix took a drag and let it out slow. “Same.”

“What’s keeping you up?” she asked, knowing full well the question cut deeper than it sounded.

He looked over at her then—eyes dark, unreadable. “Ghosts.”

A chill skated down her spine, but she nodded like she understood. Because she did.

“They don’t like to be quiet, do they?” she whispered.

He flicked the ash off his cigarette. “They get louder the closer I get to this place.”

Harper hugged herself tighter. “So why come back?”

He shrugged. “Some things don’t stay buried. Thought maybe if I came back, I’d find whatever I left behind.”

She tilted her head, studying him. “And have you?”

He looked right at her. “Not yet.”

The air shifted.

It wasn’t just small talk anymore. It was something else. Something slow and molten, curling between them.

Harper hesitated. “I came back for my daughter. But…”

“But what?”

She glanced toward the house, toward the window that still glowed faintly with the nightlight in her daughter’s room. “Sometimes I wonder if I came back because it’s the only place I could fall apart in peace.”

Phoenix nodded like he knew exactly what she meant.

“Familiar ruins,” he said. “They’re still ruins, but at least they’re yours.”

She exhaled shakily. “I don’t know who I am anymore. New York swallowed me whole and spit me out. All I have is a kid, a bedroom frozen in time, and this town that still sees me as someone I never really was.”

“Maybe that’s why I stayed gone so long,” he said. “Didn’t want to see what was left of the boy who lived at the end of the street.”

Harper looked at him again, longer this time. “And what is left?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, the smallest crack in his otherwise composed mask. “Enough to know better. Not enough to care.”

A beat of silence.

Then she asked, softer this time, “You ever wish you could go back and rewrite it all?”

Phoenix dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his boot. “Sometimes I think we’re all just stuck in the same chapter, flipping the pages, hoping the ending will change.”

Harper’s throat tightened. “Maybe we’re not supposed to rewrite it. Just survive it.”

Phoenix moved closer then, his presence warm and overwhelming. Not touching her—but close enough to feel the gravity of him.

“Or maybe,” he murmured, “we just need a better reason to stay.”

Their eyes met. Everything unsaid stretched taut between them.

But neither of them moved.

Not yet.

The space between them pulsed—heavy with things left unsaid, with memories clawing their way to the surface like vines through cracks in pavement.

Phoenix’s jaw flexed as he looked away, toward the tree line at the back of the yard. “This place still smells like burnt sugar and cut grass,” he muttered. “Like nothing’s changed.”

Harper smiled faintly. “Everything’s changed. You just can’t see it in the dark.”

His eyes flicked back to her. “I see more in the dark than most people do in daylight.”

That made her chest tighten. There was something broken in his voice—smooth like whiskey, sharp like regret.

He shifted slightly, digging his hands into his back pockets. Like he needed something to do, some distraction from the question that had been building in his throat since she stepped outside.

He didn’t know if it was curiosity or guilt that made him ask, but his voice was low when he finally spoke.

“Your daughter… how old is she?”

Harper froze, just for a second. Enough for Phoenix to notice.

“She’s five,” she said softly, eyes on the ground. “Six in September.”

Phoenix nodded, slow. “She have his eyes?”

Harper looked up sharply.

His expression didn’t flinch, but his eyes held something—something raw and unfiltered.

“She has mine,” she said, voice clipped. “And her own.”

He nodded again, more to himself than to her. “Right.”

Another silence stretched, but this one was different. Tighter.

“I didn’t mean—” he started.

“No,” Harper interrupted gently. “You did. And it’s okay. You wouldn’t be the first to wonder.”

She rubbed her arms again, but it wasn’t from the cold.

“It’s strange,” she went on, “how people expect you to be a whole person after shattering into pieces. They want the version of you they remember. The version they loved or envied or needed. But I’m not her anymore.”

Phoenix looked at her like he was trying to trace the lines of someone he’d only ever known in pieces.

“I don’t think I ever really knew her,” he said after a moment. “I just thought I did.”

Harper smiled, a sad, tired kind of smile. “That makes two of us.”

He took a step closer, closing the last bit of distance. The night seemed to hush around them, like it knew not to interrupt.

“I wanted to write once,” he said suddenly. “Poems. Lyrics. I don’t know—something worth bleeding for. But every time I picked up a pen, it felt like I was stealing someone else’s story.”

She tilted her head, searching his face. “So what did you do instead?”

He looked down at his hands. “Left. Fought. Screwed up. Survived.”

“That’s a story too, Phoenix.”

“Not one I ever wanted to tell.”

Her breath hitched, just slightly. There was something devastating in the way he said her name—soft, like he’d been saving it. Like he didn’t trust himself to say it again.

“You ever wonder,” she asked quietly, “what would’ve happened if you’d stayed?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Instead, he stepped closer, now only a breath apart. His voice was rough with honesty when he finally replied.

“Every damn day.”

The wind picked up then, brushing her hair into her face. She didn’t move it. She just looked up at him like he was the last memory she hadn’t let go of—and maybe never would.

“I should go inside,” she whispered.

“I know.”

But neither of them moved.

Because some nights don’t end with goodbye.
Some nights just… hold you still.