The story begins not with schemes or danger, but with the lazy sunlight of a Barcelona afternoon. A small café tucked away in a narrow alley, never too crowded, carried the mingled scents of roasted coffee and a faint trace of turpentine in the air.
And then—there was the man who stole my breath the moment I saw him.
His name was Liam Myers. I remember that clearly. The first time I laid eyes on him, he was sitting in his usual corner by the window, frowning at a sketchbook spread open before him, graphite smudging his fingertips. A simple white T-shirt and washed-out jeans clinging loosely to his frame—unremarkable clothes, yet on him they only emphasized the lean strength of his body.
His hair was a cool, pale blond, faintly curled, with a few rebellious strands falling across his smooth forehead. He looked like any struggling young artist in this city—perhaps even more threadbare than most. And yet, if you looked closer, there was something impossible to ignore: a face too striking, features sculpted with the precision of marble.
But it was his eyes that held me captive. A rare, glacial shade of blue, almost translucent, as though the Mediterranean itself had poured all its melancholy into them. Each time he lifted his gaze from the page to the window, it felt like he was carrying an ocean of sorrow I could never quite reach.
Megan always said men like him were trouble. Too beautiful, too enigmatic—like a leather-bound book with gilded edges, tempting but impossible to read. The kind of story that could set a woman on fire simply by existing.
But I didn't believe her then. To me, he was a silent iceberg, and I—foolishly—thought I could be the sun that melted his frost, revealing the breathtaking world hidden beneath.
I never imagined Liam Myers was more than just a struggling artist in a worn-out T-shirt with graphite on his hands. I never imagined the truth he kept buried wasn't about "past wounds" or an artist's fragile sensitivity but a darkness far more dangerous than anything I could comprehend.
Every flicker of distance, every sudden chill in his voice, every shadow that slipped across his face—they weren't accidents. They were threads of a carefully woven lie. A lie about another woman.
And that lie would nearly shatter everything I believed about love. It left me bleeding with doubt, stranded in years of quiet torment, wondering if I had ever truly known him—or myself.
I tried so hard to reach him, to warm him, never realizing that everything I thought was real was nothing more than a performance—a carefully constructed act, staged for one purpose alone: to protect me.
And it all began so simply, so innocently, like the opening scene of any romantic film.