After the storm, something changed.
Not dramatically.
Not in a way anyone else could notice.
But Ava felt it.
Every second.
Every glance.
Every silence.
The walls they had spent weeks building were beginning to c***k.
The pretending wasn't gone.
It simply felt weaker now.
Like a fragile thread stretched too tightly.
One pull.
One mistake.
One moment of honesty.
And everything would break.
The frightening part?
Ava wasn't sure she wanted to stop it anymore.
The next morning arrived bright and warm.
Sunlight streamed through her bedroom window.
Birds sang outside.
The world looked painfully normal.
Ava lay awake staring at the ceiling.
Thinking about Noah.
Again.
Always Noah.
She remembered his words from the night before.
"I'm glad it's you."
The sentence repeated
