Strangers Again
The first time Daniel saw her again, it was raining.
He stood under the awning of a little bookstore on Elm Street, thumbing through a secondhand copy of East of Eden, when the bell above the door jingled and a voice — soft, familiar, impossibly distant — asked, "Do you still carry used poetry books?"
He froze.
Fifteen years had not dulled her voice. It had matured, deepened with age and distance, but somewhere beneath it was the same lilt, the same curious tone she had used when they were seventeen and lying under the stars, dreaming of Paris and poetry readings and lives bigger than their town allowed.
He looked up.
She stood with her back to him, speaking to the woman at the counter. Her dark brown hair, once kept in long waves, was now shorter — shoulder-length and tucked behind one ear. She wore a black wool coat and held an umbrella dripping rainwater onto the doormat.
Daniel blinked. His chest felt tight, as if someone had pressed a fist inside it.
"Lila," he said before he could stop himself.
She turned.
Time slowed.
Her eyes widened — the same stormy gray, still framed by thick lashes. But there was something else now. Distance. Confusion. Pain, maybe.
"Daniel?" she said.
The silence between them was loud. The kind that echoed with all the things they never got to say.
Fifteen years. And now they were standing just ten feet apart.
Strangers again.
Lila didn't move. For a long second, neither did he.
The bookstore's warm light cast golden reflections on the puddles forming outside, but between them, the air was colder than it should've been — too full of old ghosts.
Daniel took a cautious step forward, still clutching the worn copy of East of Eden in one hand. "I didn't expect to see you again," he said quietly. "Not here."
She smiled, but it wasn't the smile he remembered. It was softer, more guarded. Like a lock on a door once left wide open.
"I could say the same," she replied. "You still living here?"
"Yeah," he said, nodding. "Left for a while. Came back about four years ago. You?"
"Just visiting," she said, eyes drifting toward the window. "Dad passed away three weeks ago. I'm...sorting the estate."
A pause.
Daniel swallowed. "I'm sorry."
She nodded, expression unreadable. "Thanks."
Of course, he would know. The whole town would've known. Even after all these years, the name Alistair Wren still turned heads — the man who owned half the real estate in Coldridge, who ruled his empire like a king, and his daughter like a prisoner.
Daniel remembered the way Alistair had looked at him when he found them together. Like he wasn't a boy in love, but a stain on the carpet — something to be scrubbed out.
Lila wrapped her coat tighter around her body. "You still working construction?"
"No," he said, shaking his head. "I teach now. English lit. At the community college."
A flicker crossed her face — surprise, or something warmer. "Really? That's... That's amazing."
He shrugged, trying not to look proud. "Well, not exactly the Sorbonne," he joked, and instantly regretted it.
Paris. Their teenage dream.
Her expression shifted, and the silence returned — thicker this time, layered with memory.
They had promised to run away there once. To write poetry and sip red wine on rooftop balconies. That promise had broken the night her father caught them. The night Daniel was dragged out of her life was like a chapter ripped from a book.
Fifteen years.
He had imagined this moment — what he'd say, what she'd say — a thousand different ways. But none of those versions had felt this raw—this hollow.
"I should go," Lila said softly, glancing toward the door.
"Yeah. Of course," Daniel replied, stepping back instinctively, giving her space. "I didn't mean to… I didn't know you'd be here."
She looked at him again — really looked at him. The angles of his face were sharper now, worn by time. His hair had darkened at the temples, and there was a faint scar above his brow she didn't remember.
But his eyes — those soft brown eyes — they hadn't changed.
"You look the same," she said, almost too quietly.
"So do you," he whispered.
She gave him a faint smile, then turned and pushed open the door. The bell above chimed again, and rain gusted in, cool and damp.
He stood frozen in place as she disappeared into the gray outside, her umbrella unfurling like a dark flower.
Just like that, she was gone again.
But not really.
Because now she was here — back in Cold-ridge. Back in his orbit.
And Daniel knew one thing with terrifying certainty:
This wasn't the end.
It was only the beginning.
After Lila left the bookstore, Daniel didn't move for a long while.
The air around him still hummed with her presence — her voice, her scent, the quiet weight of her gaze. The years they'd spent apart hadn't erased her from his memory. If anything, time had polished her there — made her softer, brighter, more unreachable.
He stared out at the rain. And for the first time in years, he let himself remember.
The Wren estate had always been off-limits.
Perched on the northern edge of Coldridge like a castle, it sat behind tall iron gates, surrounded by manicured hedges and silence. Most kids in town had never seen the inside. But Daniel had.
Not because he belonged there — no one from his side of town ever did — but because Lila Wren had decided, one ordinary spring day, that Daniel Carter was interesting.
He was fifteen when they met.
She was sitting alone under the old willow tree by the town library, sketching in a leather-bound journal. He'd just finished a landscaping job across the street and was covered in grass clippings and sweat. She looked up, caught him watching, and didn't look away.
That was Lila — bold, strange, beautiful in ways that weren't obvious. She didn't care about small talk or fashion or who her father was. She cared about books. Music. Sketches. Stars.
They became inseparable that summer.
She taught him about Pablo Neruda and jazz records. He showed her how to fish and skip rocks. They spent long evenings reading to each other beneath that willow tree, or sneaking into the abandoned greenhouse behind her house.
At sixteen, they fell in love like people drowning — breathlessly, desperately, without reason or restraint.
And they kept it secret. Because even then, Lila knew what her father would do if he found out.