For two days after Cameron played her the song in the café, Jayla walked around with a strange warmth lodged beneath her ribs — like someone had lit a candle there and forgotten to blow it out.
It wasn’t love.
It wasn’t even something she knew how to name.
But it was real, and it was hers, and she didn’t want to lose it.
Still… the world outside didn’t soften just because something inside her had begun to bloom.
On the morning of what would become their first shift in rhythm, Jayla arrived at the café to find a small group of teenagers whispering outside the glass windows. They weren’t doing anything — just loitering, glancing inside, waiting.
For her.
She felt it immediately.
The attention.
Not hateful, not hostile — but intrusive.
As she unlocked the door, one girl gasped and n
