The rain came softly at first, a drizzle that smeared the windows of my kitchen and turned the garden into a blur of green and red. I sat at the table with a half-written letter in front of me, the ink smudged where my hand had lingered too long.
The letter was to Adrian. Or perhaps it wasn't. It began with his name but ended in silence, as though my heart refused to finish what my hand had started.
I thought of him constantly—his voice, his eyes, the way he watched me as if I were something he'd been searching for all his life. But I also thought of the years between us, the emptiness his absence had left, and the fear that if I let him close again, he would carve that emptiness even deeper.
A knock at the door startled me.
When I opened it, Adrian stood there, drenched, rain dripping from his hair, his coat clinging to his shoulders. He looked like a man undone, not by the weather, but by something heavier.
"Elara," he said, breathless. "I couldn't wait anymore."
I stepped aside, and he entered, leaving a trail of water across the floor. He didn't bother with pleasantries. His eyes found mine, fierce and vulnerable all at once.
"I need to say this," he began. "And I need you to hear it all, even if you send me away after."
I nodded, my throat tight.
He ran a hand over his face, as though steadying himself. "I have lived so many years without you. I've tried to bury you under work, under other loves, under silence. But nothing—nothing—ever erased you. You are the ache I carried into every room, the name I almost spoke in my sleep, the shadow I could never step out of. And I don't want to carry that ache anymore. Not if I have a chance—any chance—of holding you again."
The words struck me like a blow. I gripped the back of a chair, my knees weak.
"Adrian—"
"No, let me finish." His voice cracked, raw. "I can't give you back the years we lost. I can't undo the hurt I caused. But I can give you now. I can give you the rest of whatever time we have. I love you, Elara. I never stopped. And I am asking you—not as the boy you once kissed goodbye, but as the man standing before you now—will you let me love you again?"
Silence swelled in the room, louder than the rain outside.
My heart thrashed against my ribs, caught between longing and fear. I wanted to run to him, to bury my face in his chest and breathe him in until the world disappeared. But I also wanted to run from him, from the danger of losing myself all over again.
"Do you know what you're asking?" I whispered.
"Yes." His answer was steady, certain. "I'm asking you to risk everything with me. Because I swear, Elara, this time I will not let go."
Tears blurred my vision. "And if you fail me again?"
"Then I will spend every day after begging your forgiveness," he said. "But I won't fail. Not this time."
I turned away, my hands trembling. My life, fragile though it was, had been carefully constructed out of solitude and small certainties. Letting him back in meant shattering all of it.
And yet, hadn't I already been shattered, years ago on that train platform? Hadn't I been living with a ghost ever since?
I thought of the girl I had been—the one who believed forever was a promise carved into the stars. I thought of the woman I had become—cautious, weary, afraid to believe in anything that might break. And I realized, painfully, that both of them lived inside me still, tugging me in opposite directions.
Adrian stepped closer. His hand hovered near mine, not touching, but close enough that I could feel the warmth of it. "Elara," he whispered, "choose me."
The words cracked something open inside me.
I turned back to him, my tears falling freely now. "I don't know if I can," I confessed.
"Yes, you can," he said softly. "You already have, in the way you look at me, in the way you can't let go of the past. It's not just me who kept that kiss, Elara. You did too. We both did. And it means something. It has to."
For a long moment, I stood suspended, every breath heavy with the weight of decision.
And then, slowly, I lifted my hand and placed it in his.
His eyes closed, a shudder of relief passing through him, and when he opened them again, they were shining. He pulled me into his arms, and I let him. For the first time in decades, I let myself fall into him, against him, as though I had never stopped belonging there.
When his lips touched mine, it was nothing like the desperate kisses of our youth. It was slower, deeper, steadier. A kiss that carried not just passion but promise. A kiss that said: I know what I lost. I know what I'm risking. And I will not let it go again.
When we pulled apart, my forehead resting against his, I whispered, "This is madness."
He smiled faintly. "Maybe. But it's ours."
And in that moment, though fear still coiled in me, though doubt lingered at the edges, I knew one truth: I had made my choice.
I had chosen him.