Fourteen was supposed to be an in-between year — too old for dolls, too young for love. But for Cara, it became the year everything changed.

When her brother’s best friend, Callum Adler, starts spending more time at their house, Cara notices things most adults ignore. The bruises. The quiet. The way their mother starts folding extra laundry like it’s second nature. Callum's broken home becomes a secret the whole family carries, and Cara — wide-eyed, overlooked, and quietly growing — starts to fall for him in all the ways she shouldn’t.

But Callum is four years older. Eighteen. Off-limits. Almost a man. And despite their quiet moments — the almosts, the shared glances, the night she asked to kiss him — he walks away without a goodbye, leaving her in the silence he helped create.

Years pass. Cara grows. Builds a life. Finds herself. By eighteen, she’s no longer just Kaden’s little sister. She’s her own person — confident, loved, maybe even happy. But everything tilts when she runs into Callum again at a skating rink. Older, composed, and entirely unexpected.

He’s not the same boy who used to sleep on her couch with bruises on his ribs — and she’s not the girl who watched him leave.

But unfinished things have a way of circling back.

Told in alternating perspectives of Cara and Callum, What We Never Said explores the slow burn of first love, the ache of timing, and what it really means to grow up — and grow apart — before finding your way back.

For a second, it felt like we were suspended in something that didn't belong to the real world.


Then the door to the rink creaked open behind us, and the spell broke.


She stood just outside the glass door, her face drawn with the kind of soft, careful expression only your best friend wears when she knows she's stepping into something delicate.


"I'm heading out," she said gently. "You coming with?"


I blinked. Looked at her. Then back at Callum.


The wind caught the hem of his hoodie, lifted it just enough to see the shadow of old scars beneath the fabric. Faded now. But still there.


She gave me a quiet, almost apologetic look, then turned to head toward her car.


I stepped back from Callum, suddenly aware of how close we'd been standing.


"Are you…" I hesitated. "Are you staying at the house tonight?"


His gaze lingered on mine. "Kaden offered."


I turned to go, then paused again, pulling my sleeves over my fingers — the way I always used to when I was nervous around him.


He didn't say it back right away. Just looked at me like he wasn't sure how to let go of the moment without ruining it.


His voice was softer than it had been all night.


I turned and walked toward Liv's car, the cold finally sinking through the thin fabric of my hoodie. She was already in the driver's seat, engine running, heat on. I opened the door, slid in wordlessly, and shut it behind me.


As we pulled out of the parking lot, I looked once in the side mirror.


Chapter 17 - Callum