The next morning unfolded like glass beautiful, fragile, and ready to break at the slightest touch.
London was quiet, wrapped in a pale mist that blurred the lines between what was gone and what still lingered.
Adrian walked through the old streets with his coat buttoned high, hands tucked in his pockets. His mind was heavy with fragments words he didn't say, things he wished he could undo. The memory of Elara's voice still echoed in him: "What if the one setting the fire is you?"
He stopped at the café near the gallery the one where they first met, under the drizzle that turned her hair into something wild and luminous. The same table was still there, by the window. Two cups of coffee, a small vase with a dying flower, and silence.
He ordered her usual out of habit. He didn't touch it.
Meanwhile, Elara was in her studio, her canvas filled with half-finished skies. The colors bled crimson melting into gray, gold fading into pale blue.
Her brush moved with restraint, but her heart wasn't listening. Every stroke felt like a plea, every color like a confession.
She stopped painting when she saw his name appear on her phone.
She didn't answer.
It wasn't anger anymore. It was something softer exhaustion, maybe, or the kind of ache that no longer needs words.
Hours later, Adrian stood in front of her door, rain dripping from his hair, his fingers trembling slightly as he knocked.
When the door opened, Elara stood there in her paint-stained shirt, her eyes guarded but not cruel.
"I wasn't sure you'd come," she said.
"I almost didn't," he admitted. "But then I realized I've been living in almosts for too long."
She stepped aside without a word. The studio was quiet except for the sound of the storm outside.
He looked at her latest painting a horizon of red and shadow, with two figures standing apart, reaching but never touching.
"You finished it," he said softly.
Elara's lips curved in a faint smile. "It finishes itself. Like everything we start."
He turned to her, eyes searching. "Do you still believe in what we were?"
"I believe in what we tried to be," she answered. "But believing doesn't always save you."
He wanted to pull her close then to prove that love could still rewrite what time had broken. But he didn't. Because love, he realized, wasn't always about holding on; sometimes, it was about standing still in the wreckage and learning how to breathe again.
A flash of lightning painted her face in silver. She looked almost unreal a memory given form.
And in that trembling light, Adrian whispered, "You were my beginning, Elara."
"And you," she said, voice soft as rain, "were my favorite ending."
Thunder cracked across the city.
They stood there, inches apart, surrounded by canvases that had seen every shade of their love.
For a moment, the world outside ceased to exist. Only the red horizon between them burned the color of everything they could not keep.
Elara broke the silence first.
"Why did you really come, Adrian?"
Her voice was calm, but the question felt like a knife drawn gently precise, deliberate, meant to reach the truth rather than wound.
Adrian hesitated, his gaze lowering to the floor splattered with traces of red paint. "Because I can't stand the quiet without you in it," he said. "Because every time I try to move on, I end up painting you in the margins of my mind."
Elara looked away. "You don't paint anymore."
"No," he said, voice hoarse. "You do it for both of us."
A pause stretched between them, fragile as the light filtering through the curtains.
Then she asked the question he feared most. "Was it true? What he said about the accident?"
Adrian's breath caught.
He had lived a thousand versions of this moment in his head, all of them ending with him confessing everything
the rain, the road, the headlights, the scream he still heard in his dreams.
But now, standing before her, he could only whisper, "It wasn't your fault to know."
"That's not an answer."
He looked up, eyes burning with something raw. "It's the only one I have left."
Her expression didn't change, but her fingers trembled slightly as she brushed her hair back. "You think hiding the truth protects me, but it doesn't. It just builds walls I can't see through."
He stepped closer. "If I told you everything, Elara, you'd never look at me the same again."
"Then at least I'd be looking," she said.
The words hit him like a strike to the chest simple, devastating, true.
Outside, the rain began to turn into a storm, wind thrashing against the windows as though the city itself was listening.
Adrian reached for the sketch on her desk the one of them standing on the cliff at dusk, the sea behind them burning red. He ran his thumb along the outline of her face.
"You've been painting goodbyes," he murmured.
"I've been painting what I can't say," she replied.
Then, for the first time in what felt like forever, their eyes met and stayed
long enough for everything between them to surface: grief, love, anger, longing.
He took a step forward, and she didn't move away.
"Say it," she whispered. "Whatever you've buried, say it before the silence does it for you."
Adrian's voice trembled. "I should have died that night, not her."
Elara's lips parted in shock, but no words came out.
He continued, the confession spilling out like rainwater from a cracked vessel.
"She was in my car. We argued. I looked away for one second and the world ended.
I lived, and she didn't. Her brother never forgave me. I never forgave myself."
Silence swallowed the air.
Elara stepped closer until she could see the reflection of lightning in his eyes. "You've been punishing yourself ever since," she said softly.
He nodded, unable to speak.
"Then stop," she whispered. "Stop turning pain into penance. Stop building graves out of the people who still love you."
Adrian's breath shuddered. "And if I don't know how?"
"Then let me teach you."
Her hand reached up hesitant, trembling and touched his cheek. For a moment, the storm outside fell away.
There was only warmth.
And the feeling that maybe, just maybe, love could survive even after truth had broken it.
Elara didn't say anything at first. She just stood there, eyes glistening, as if her soul was processing what her heart already knew. The sound of thunder rolled in the distance a low, aching growl that seemed to echo Adrian's confession.
When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet, almost breaking.
"You've been carrying this alone all this time?"
He nodded. "Because I thought that was what I deserved."
She shook her head, her tears finally spilling. "You don't deserve to live in a world made only of ghosts, Adrian."
He wanted to speak, to say that ghosts were all he had left but when he looked at her, he realized she was the proof that wasn't true.
"Elara," he said softly, "you were never supposed to be part of this story. You were supposed to be my way out, not my reminder."
Her eyes met his, fierce through the blur of tears. "And yet here I am still choosing to stay."
The silence that followed was a strange kind of mercy. The storm outside began to fade, replaced by a soft drizzle tapping against the windowpane like an afterthought.
Adrian exhaled shakily. "You shouldn't forgive me."
"I'm not forgiving you," she said. "I'm seeing you."
He frowned slightly. "There's a difference?"
"Yes," she whispered. "Forgiveness is for the past. Seeing you really seeing you that's for now."
Her words lodged somewhere deep inside him. For the first time in years, the weight in his chest shifted not gone, but lighter, like something that could finally be carried without breaking him.
Elara turned away and picked up a small envelope from the shelf. "Before you came,
I found this," she said. "It was in one of your old journals."
She handed it to him. The paper was worn, edges yellowed, his handwriting still intact.
He unfolded it slowly. Inside were three words:
"I still remember."
He stared at it for a long time, his throat tightening. "This was for her," he said.
Elara shook her head. "No. I think it was for you."
The truth struck deeper than any blade.
He closed his eyes and, for a moment, allowed the memories to move through him the laughter, the rain, the crash, the emptiness. But instead of drowning, he breathed. He let them exist without letting them define him.
When he opened his eyes again, Elara was still there, standing in the faint gray light of dawn.
"I don't know where we go from here," he said.
She smiled faintly. "Then let's start by not running."
He hesitated. "You mean together?"
Her answer was simple. "If the silence can hold both our names, then yes."
Adrian took a slow step toward her, then another. When he finally reached her, he realized something that survival wasn't the absence of pain, but the courage to feel it without hiding.
They stood there, close enough to feel each other's breath, while the world outside shifted from storm to sunrise.
The first light broke through the clouds, painting her face in gold. And in that moment, Adrian understood: this wasn't forgiveness. It was resurrection.
He whispered, almost to himself,
"Maybe this is what remains when everything else fades."
Elara nodded. "Not everything fades. Some things just change their shape."
He smiled a quiet, exhausted, honest smile and for the first time in years, he felt human again.
Noted;
NEW NOVEL: The Bride of His Revenge
More drama.
More tension.
More addictive romance.
Read the first chapter now available on my profile!