Morning came with a silence that felt heavier than night.
London was still damp from the storm, the air tinted with the faint smell of rain on stone. Inside the studio, the light fell pale and uneven through the tall windows, spilling across unfinished canvases.
Elara hadn't slept. She sat before her painting The Red Horizon the brush suspended midair. Her thoughts were still wandering through the rain, tracing the echo of Adrian's voice, the way his eyes had looked before he walked away.
Every color she mixed came out wrong. The reds were too sharp, the greys too dull, the blues too heavy. She tried to paint the sea again, but all she could see was him standing beneath the lamplight, soaked, broken, beautiful in his ruin.
The door creaked open.
She didn't turn. "You're early," she said quietly, assuming it was her assistant.
But it wasn't.
It was Adrian.
He stood by the doorway, hesitating like a man who'd forgotten how to ask for forgiveness. His shirt was still damp, his hair disheveled, his eyes tired but something in them burned, soft and stubborn.
"Elara," he said.
She froze at the sound of his voice. It was raw, lower than usual, like it had carried the weight of the whole night.
"I shouldn't be here," he continued, "but every time I walk away, it feels like I lose more than I did before."
Her hand trembled around the brush. "You already left once," she whispered. "Do you want to finish it this time?"
He stepped closer. "I didn't leave because I wanted to. I left because if you knew what I've done, you'd"
She interrupted, her tone sharp but her eyes glistening. "Stop deciding for me, Adrian. I don't need you to protect me from pain. I need you to trust me enough to face it."
For a moment, silence filled the room. The kind of silence that hurts more than shouting ever could.
Finally, Adrian exhaled, his voice breaking. "I had to choose once between saving her and saving myself. And I chose wrong."
Elara's lips parted, but no sound came.
He looked away, jaw tight. "She didn't drown because of the storm," he said. "She drowned because I couldn't reach her in time."
The confession hung in the air like smoke. Elara felt her chest tighten not in judgment, but in sorrow so deep it softened everything.
She rose slowly, walking toward him.
"You've been punishing yourself ever since," she said.
He met her gaze, guilt flickering behind his calm. "And now I'm punishing you."
She shook her head. "No. You're just afraid that if I stay, you'll have to stop running."
For a moment, something fragile passed between them a quiet understanding born from pain, not words. He reached for her hand, almost hesitantly, like he wasn't sure he deserved it.
This time, she didn't pull away.
The warmth of his touch felt like a confession all its own trembling, desperate, human.
Outside, the clouds parted, and the first light of morning spilled into the room, golden and soft. It touched their faces like a benediction, fragile but real.
Elara looked at him. "If we burn, Adrian," she whispered, "then let it be for something that means more than fear."
He held her gaze for a long time and though he said nothing, she could feel the words he couldn't speak trembling beneath his breath.
The city felt heavier that night. Rain drifted against the glass walls of Adrian's studio, smudging the skyline into something ghostlike and unfamiliar. He hadn't painted for hours the canvas before him was only a blur of gray and red, the colors bleeding together like his thoughts.
He could still hear Elara's voice from earlier soft, uncertain, trembling.
"Why do I feel like you're slipping away from me?"
He'd wanted to answer. To tell her everything. But the truth, once spoken, had a way of destroying what little peace still lingered between them. So instead, he had smiled that polite, empty smile he'd mastered years ago and watched her walk into the rain.
Now, the echo of her footsteps haunted the silence.
Adrian stood and reached for the cigarette box on the table but stopped midway. He hadn't smoked in years. Not since her death not since he'd promised to live clean, to build something new. But tonight, his hands shook as if the past were crawling back under his skin.
He looked down at his sketches. Pages of Elara her hair, her eyes, the way she looked when she thought no one was watching. He hadn't meant to draw her, yet she appeared in every shadow, every unfinished line.
The door creaked.
"Adrian?"
Her voice. Real, this time.
He turned. Elara stood in the doorway, her coat soaked, hair clinging to her face. She looked like a ghost pulled from the rain fragile, luminous, heartbreakingly alive.
"You shouldn't be here," he said quietly.
She stepped closer, ignoring the words. "Then tell me why, Adrian. Why do you look at me like you're remembering someone else?"
He froze. The question cut through him like a blade.
Elara's eyes searched his face. "You don't have to lie. I see it. Every time I speak, you flinch like my voice reminds you of something you lost."
He inhaled sharply. "You remind me of someone I couldn't save."
For a heartbeat, she said nothing. The rain thundered harder against the glass, each drop sounding like the pulse of something breaking.
Elara reached out, fingertips trembling. "Then save me now. Don't push me away just because you're afraid of ghosts."
He wanted to believe her. Wanted to step forward and let the walls fall but his body refused. The memory of lightning, of screams, of a name he hadn't spoken in years, pinned him in place.
"Elara," he whispered, "you don't understand what happens when I let someone close."
She smiled sadly. "Then let me understand."
Her voice cracked on the last word, and for the first time in years, Adrian felt his composure crumble. He crossed the distance between them and caught her wrist before she could leave. Their eyes met rainlight flickering between them and everything unsaid roared like a storm.
"I don't want to lose you too," he said, barely audible.
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was full of fear, of want, of everything they had tried not to feel.
Elara exhaled slowly, then leaned her forehead against his chest. The warmth of her skin, the rhythm of her breath they felt real, alive, too human to resist.
Outside, thunder rolled again, and the whole city seemed to hold its breath.
Adrian closed his eyes for a long moment, feeling the weight of her against him fragile, trembling, alive. Her heartbeat was fast, unsteady, matching the rhythm of the rain that battered the windows.
He wanted to hold her until the storm ended.
But storms like this never ended. They only changed form.
When Elara finally looked up, her eyes were shining not with tears, but with something deeper, quieter. "I don't care who you were," she whispered. "I just want to know who you are when you're with me."
The words pierced through him more sharply than accusation ever could.
He brushed a strand of wet hair from her face, his thumb tracing the faint curve of her cheek. "Then remember me like this," he said softly. "Not as what I was… but as what I'm trying to be."
Lightning flared across the skyline, illuminating them for a single, breathless second two silhouettes framed by shadow and light, as if the universe itself were painting them into memory.
And then, without warning, the power came back on. The room filled with electric hum, with harsh white light.
Elara blinked, stepping back, the spell of candlelight broken.
Neither spoke.
The silence between them stretched not empty, but aching. A pause that said this isn't over, even as the world outside began to move again.
Elara turned toward the door, her voice barely above a whisper.
"You can keep hiding, Adrian… but someday the past will stop knocking and start breaking the door."
She left before he could answer.
Adrian stood there long after she was gone, the rain easing into a slow drizzle. He looked down at his unfinished sketch the lines smudged, the color fading and realized it looked exactly like her leaving.
He tore the page from the book, folded it once, and set it beside the dying candle.
Outside, dawn began to crawl up the edges of the city, soft and uncertain the color of heartbreak trying to turn into hope.
And for the first time since the night she died, Adrian whispered a prayer not for the dead, but for the living.
"Let me not ruin what I still have."
The candle flickered once, then went out.