(Elara’s POV)
The city felt different on the way back home.
Not quieter exactly, but slower, as if the night itself was winding down after watching us all day. Streetlights blurred past the windows, their reflections stretching across the damp roads left behind by yesterday’s rain. I sat beside Asher in the car, fingers still warm where his hand had held mine earlier, my mind replaying the way he’d said it so simply—I love you—as if it hadn’t rearranged something deep inside my chest.
I felt lighter than I had in a long time.
Happy in a way that didn’t demand effort.
Asher drove in comfortable silence, one hand on the wheel, the other resting loosely near my knee. He wasn’t distant, but there was a subtle shift in him, a quiet inward pull that I’d begun to recognize. The openness from
