Jayla didn’t plan to avoid Cameron.
It just… happened.
One day turned into two, then three, each one widening the space between them like slow-spreading cracks in pavement. She didn’t answer his texts right away. Sometimes she didn’t answer at all. She told herself she was busy, exhausted, distracted.
But truth sat heavier than excuses:
She was scared.
Not of him — never of him — but of what she felt around him. Of how easily she could imagine standing beside him at that long table again. Of how part of her wanted to reach for his hand and let him guide her into a world she didn’t belong to.
She’d been invisible for so long. She didn’t know how to exist in a room where people noticed her.
Cameron, meanwhile, felt her absence like a dull throb beneath his ribs.
At first, he gave her
