The second steadier.
Then something else followed—something I didn’t know how to name.
Not a song I’d learned.
Not a tune I’d practiced.
Just sound pulled straight out of the place where grief and love and fear had tangled themselves together.
Low notes that ached.
High ones that trembled.
A melody that didn’t try to be pretty.
It just told the truth.
I played until my hands hurt.
Until the city outside shifted from deep night to that faint, uncertain gray that comes before morning.
And for the first time since everything had fallen apart, I didn’t feel like I was running.
I felt like I was finally listening.
CHAPTER 26
ETHAN
It was cold when I left. One of those mid-October rains that soaks straight through your sweatshirt and settles into your bones. The streets were slick and shining, the city muted and gray, steam curling up from grates like the place itself was exhaling.
I was halfway home, earbuds in, hood up, when something made me stop.
Not a sound.
A feeling.
I looked up.
She was standing on the sidewalk across the street.
No umbrella.
Hair plastered to her shoulders, rain-dark and dripping.
Thin jacket soaked through, clinging to her like it had been painted on.
Cheeks flushed from the cold, eyes too bright.
For one impossible second, my body reacted before my mind did.
Pure instinct.
A lightning bolt of want so sharp it almost stole my breath.
God.
She looked exactly the way she always did when she caught me off guard—beautiful in that way that felt like it belonged to me and terrified me at the same time.
