AIDEN'S POV
She ran.
And I didn’t chase her.
Not at first.
I stood there, frozen, caught in the stillness that followed the crash of broken glass and the chaos it left behind. My hands clenched the banister, my heart beating too fast, too loud. The weight of what I’d just witnessed pressed down on my chest, but still—I didn’t move.
Not even when Oliver turned.
He looked like a man still searching for a dream he didn’t realize had already slipped through his fingers. His hopeful expression from moments ago had twisted into confusion. Panic. He looked over the crowd, scanning for her, searching the shadows.
But Cheryl was gone.
And then his eyes found me.
We stared at each other across the space that separated us, a flight of stairs and a mountain of unspoken truths between us. His
