The next time I saw Adrian, the air was warmer, the kind of late-spring warmth that carried both promise and threat—of bloom and storm alike.
He suggested we walk. Not through town, where eyes might linger, but along the riverbank, where wild grass swayed and the path curved out of sight from the road. It was the same river where we had met all those years ago, though it seemed smaller now, its edges softened, its stones less sharp. Time had a way of wearing everything down.
We walked side by side, a careful distance between us, as though even the brush of his sleeve against mine might break whatever fragile truce we were keeping.
For a while, neither of us spoke. The silence was not uncomfortable, exactly, but heavy, filled with the weight of all the things we hadn't yet said. I could hear the sound of his breath, steady but slow, and it felt strange, intimate, after so many years of absence.
Finally, he said, "I don't know where to begin."
"Start anywhere," I replied, my voice softer than I intended.
He nodded, eyes fixed on the water. "I left, Elara, because I thought I was choosing a future. I thought if I didn't go, I'd spend my life wondering what I might have become. And for a while, I believed I was right. The city was everything I dreamed it would be—loud, alive, full of possibility. I studied under teachers who pushed me harder than I thought I could bear. I filled sketchbooks until my hands cramped. I thought of you every night, but I told myself it was worth it—that one day, I'd come back to you with something to show."
"And then?" I asked, though my heart already knew the answer.
"And then life happened." His voice cracked on the word life. "There were exhibitions, some small success, even. I thought I was on the cusp of something great. But you can't build a life on dreams alone. The money never stretched far enough. I worked jobs that drained me—waiting tables, painting signs, anything to stay afloat. And in the exhaustion, I let your letters slip unanswered."
I swallowed, the ache of those years pressing against me. "You stopped writing."
"I know." His steps faltered, and for the first time, he looked at me directly. "I tried, Elara. I'd start letters and tear them up. I didn't know how to explain myself. Every word felt like failure. And the longer I stayed silent, the harder it became to find my way back to you."
The river rushed beside us, carrying the sound of his confession away.
"I married once," he continued after a pause. His voice was low, careful, as though testing how much I could bear. "Her name was Claire. She was kind, patient with me in ways I didn't deserve. For a while, I thought I could love her the way she needed. We had a daughter—"
He stopped, exhaling hard. "She died. Our little girl. Barely three years old. A fever that came and went too fast. After that, Claire and I… we couldn't find each other again. She left, and I didn't stop her. I didn't have the strength."
I turned my face away, blinking fiercely against the sting of tears. His grief was raw, even after all these years, and though part of me wanted to close myself against it, another part ached to reach for his hand, to share even an ounce of the burden.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. The words felt useless, too small for the enormity of his loss.
He nodded, jaw tight. "I deserved to lose her. Maybe both of them. I had spent so much of my life chasing what I thought I wanted that when real love, real life, was in my hands, I didn't know how to hold it."
The path narrowed, forcing us closer. Our arms brushed, and the contact jolted through me like lightning. I kept walking, though my pulse quickened.
"And you?" he asked gently. "What about you, Elara?"
My throat tightened. For so long, I had lived as though my past was a closed room, the door locked, the windows shuttered. To open it now, to let him see inside, felt dangerous. But hadn't I always wanted him to know?
"I married too," I said at last. "His name was Michael. He was steady, reliable. A man who made sure the bills were paid and the car was safe and the grass was cut. He gave me a home, but not a fire. I wanted to believe it was enough, that love could be something quieter than what you and I had. But it wasn't. We lasted seven years before it ended. No children. Just two people who wanted different things."
Adrian's gaze was heavy on me, though I kept mine on the path. "Did you love him?"
I hesitated. "I cared for him. I wanted to love him. But part of me was always elsewhere." I risked a glance at him then, my voice barely above a whisper. "With you."
He inhaled sharply, as though the words themselves struck him.
We walked on in silence after that, the truth of our confessions hanging between us like a storm cloud.
At a bend in the river, we stopped. The water here was shallow, sunlight catching on the ripples. He crouched, picking up a smooth stone, and for a moment he looked like the boy I had first met, the boy who claimed the riverbank as his own. He skipped the stone once, twice, three times before it sank.
"I thought time would dull it," he said, his back still to me. "The memory of you. I thought it would fade, like everything else. But it never did. I carried you with me through every city, every empty bed, every canvas I painted. I tried to paint you once, years after I left. But I couldn't. I realized I wasn't painting you—I was painting the memory of you, and it wasn't enough."
His shoulders sagged, the weight of the years heavy on them.
I stepped closer, so near I could smell the faint trace of cedar still clinging to him, though softer now, mingled with the musk of age. "Adrian," I whispered, and my voice broke.
He turned then, and in his eyes I saw not just the boy I had loved, but the man he had become—scarred, weary, but still carrying that same fierce light.
"Elara," he said, and for a moment, it felt like the years had collapsed, leaving only us, as though the world had been waiting for this moment all along.
But the years had not collapsed. They were still there, heavy and real, pressing between us. The weight of them was unbearable.
And yet—I knew.
This was not the end of our story.
It was only the beginning of what came after.