Nova’s POV
It was strange how life stitched itself back together after being ripped apart. Not neat, not perfect—the seams still showed—but the pieces fit again, and that was what mattered.
Three weeks had passed since that night Adrian came back to me. Three weeks of relearning what it meant to breathe without pain lodged in my chest, of waking up not to nightmares but to warmth. Three weeks of healing.
And yet, every morning, I still touched the scar inside me where betrayal had once lived. Not because it owned me anymore, but because I wanted to remember. To remember how far I had fallen—and how far I had climbed back.
The campus had slipped into autumn now. The air smelled different—earthy, damp with the promise of rain. Trees bled orange and gold, their brittle leaves scattering a
