(Elara's POV)
It was raining.
Not enough to drench — just that kind of reluctant drizzle that makes the city feel like it's quietly sighing through its teeth. Grey. Hazy. Muted like someone had turned down the volume of the world.
Normally, I love days like this.
But today, I couldn't find comfort in it.
I'd been off-balance ever since the letter.I hadn't read it again — didn't need to. Every word was carved into my memory like glass. Sharp. Beautiful. Cold.
Whoever had written it… knew me. Really knew me. The kind of knowing that made your breath stutter and your skin tighten.
Not the facts of me — but the inside of me.
They saw something I didn't show anyone.
And that should've terrified me.
It did.
But part of me… felt seen. Known.And that unsettled me more than the fear.
I slipped into the bookstore on 12th and Wolfe, a little refuge I escaped to when the world pressed too hard. The lights were dim, the aisles narrow, and no one ever looked at me here.
Except today, someone did.
"Cold days call for Brontë, don't they?"
His voice came from beside me — soft, velvety, warm in a way that curled around my spine.
I turned.
And there he was.
Tall. Understated. Sharp edges in all the right places. Dark hair, eyes like rainclouds cracked with lightning. Something about him pulled the focus of the whole room — like he commanded silence just by existing.
He looked at me like he was reading a language written on my skin.
Familiar.
Too familiar.
"I'm sorry, have we met?" I asked, blinking at him like he might vanish.
He tilted his head, easy. "Not properly. But you dropped this last time you were here."
He held out a folded paper — just a receipt, harmless — but the way his fingers brushed mine as I took it...
Electric.
"You noticed me?" I asked, quieter than I meant to be.
"Hard not to," he said, and that half-smile struck something deep in me. "You have this... stillness about you. Like you're listening to things no one else hears."
The air between us thinned.
I felt it. Like the gravity in the room had tipped in his direction. Like I was slowly falling toward something I couldn't see.
Something about him was too smooth. Polished but wild beneath the surface. Like a storm wearing a pressed suit.
Still, I didn't step away.
My body betrayed me in subtle ways — my lips parting slightly, my grip tightening on my bag. My breath catching.
And he noticed.He absolutely noticed.
"May I?" he gestured to the book in my hand — Wuthering Heights.
I handed it to him without a word.
"Brontë understood that some desires don't fit into polite boxes," he said, flipping it open. "That some people were made to ruin each other. Beautifully."
He looked up — into me — and I forgot how to breathe.
"Are you afraid of being ruined, Elara?"
My name.
On his lips.
My stomach dropped and twisted into something I couldn't name. My breath froze.
"How do you know my name?" I asked, stepping back half a pace.
"Lucky guess," he said, too easily. "Or maybe I just pay attention."
His smile didn't widen — it deepened.Like he was peeling something open in me just by standing there.
I should've walked away. Should've run, screamed, done anything but stand there.
Instead, I held the book when he placed it back in my hands, his fingers dragging just a little longer than necessary. A deliberate friction that sparked against my skin like fire catching on velvet.
"I'll see you around, Elara."
Not a hope. Not a question.
A promise.
He turned and walked away — slowly. Like he knew I was watching.
And I was.
The rain outside had grown heavier, painting the bookstore windows in threads of water. I stood frozen in that aisle, clutching a book I couldn't read, in a body I barely recognized.
My skin buzzed where he'd touched it.
My name echoed in my ears, sweet and poisonous at once.
He knows me.He's watching me.And I didn't want him to stop.
I didn't see the camera in the ceiling light.Didn't notice his shadow lingering just beyond the glass door.
Didn't realize he hadn't truly left.
Somewhere across the street, he was still watching. I could feel it.
And I hated that part of me — the dark, quiet part — was starting to want him to.