( Alina's Pov)
I stared at my phone screen, jaw clenched, heart tapping a rhythm I pretended not to care about. His name was there again—Dante calling...—and for the sixth time in the last hour, I declined it. My thumb hovered for half a second longer than it had the last time, but I still did it.
Call ended.
Silence.
I dropped the phone face-down on the pillow beside me and inhaled the warm, cinnamon-heavy air of my mother’s living room. Ethan’s cologne still lingered in the fabric of my clothes. Or maybe I was just remembering things I shouldn't.
He had made me forget. Just for a while. The car ride, the tacos, the way he’d blushed when I wiped sauce from the corner of his mouth—those little harmless moments stacked up like sandbags around the thoughts I didn't want to drown in.
Da
