COLD UNTIL YOU

CHAPTER 5: WINTER DISTANCE

The winter break passed slowly for Eliana. Home smelled of rain and old books, and she buried herself in sketching to keep from thinking about Adrian. Lines and shading became a refuge, but no matter how hard she worked, his pale eyes kept slipping into the margins. Her friends offered practical advice—time heals, meet someone new—yet Eliana found herself resisting. She did not need distractions. She needed reasons. She had once believed his rare smile belonged to her, and that made the ache feel deeper than ordinary loneliness.

Back on campus, Adrian moved through the days like someone wearing clothes that no longer fit. He avoided the art studio and the fountain, places that made his chest ache with the memory of her. He replayed the image of her turning away as if it had been carved into his mind. At nights he sat with the blinds drawn, replaying each small kindness he had shown, wondering whether any of it had been real. Regret tasted like cold metal in his mouth, and pride, which had once felt like protection, now felt like a chain.

When the new semester began, the first day felt like a test neither of them wanted. They saw each other across the courtyard, a single look that contained apologies both given and withheld. Neither spoke. Each walked past the other as if the silence might protect them from saying something they'd regret. But the moments kept coming. A book left on a bench, a borrowed pen returned, a shared glance in the library. Each small collision pulled at the old thread binding them together.

Eliana had promised herself to focus on art. She joined a student exhibition group, lost herself in palettes and canvases, and yet whenever a professor praised a piece and called it “raw and honest,” she felt the compliment double and all she could think of was the river of memory that kept returning to him. She did not want to be the kind of woman whose life orbited around a man, and yet the universe kept arranging their paths to cross. She hated that she still cared and flinched that he still lingered in the corners of her world.