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.

Loud. Smooth. Fast with compliments and faster with trouble.


He flirted with everyone — waitresses, teachers, grandmas at gas stations. And Cara had never seemed to take him seriously.


I watched from across the kitchen as his arm dropped over her shoulders like it belonged there. Saw her stiffen — just for a second — before slipping into that half-smile she used when she was trying to act like she didn't care.


And then he leaned in and said something low, and she laughed.


And that? That hit somewhere I didn't want to admit I still felt.


I could almost pretend it didn't matter. That the sight of her in that tiny bikini, hair still damp from the pool, skin warm and golden in the kitchen light, didn't mess with my head. That I hadn't been trying not to look all afternoon.


But seeing River touch her — watching her let him — made something shift.


More like… regret, wrapped in a slow burn.


He didn't know that she bit the inside of her cheek when she was nervous or that she sang along to music under her breath when she thought no one was listening. He didn't know that she used to sit on the stairs and listen to Kaden and me talk like we were important. Or that she once asked to kiss me like she was confessing a secret.


River didn't know the years. The quiet. The pieces.


He just saw the version of her now — beautiful and sharp and shining.


And I couldn't blame him for being drawn to it.


But part of me wanted to grab his arm. Say not her. Say don't play with something that fragile, something that matters.


Because I didn't have the right anymore.


Still, when he turned away, I couldn't stop myself from watching the way Cara watched him. Not like she liked him. Not really.


But not like she didn't enjoy the attention, either.


Because it meant the distance I'd put between us might not be empty anymore.


It might be filling up with someone else.


Chapter 28 - Callum