CHAPTER FOUR
1304 Words
Nova’s POV
Two Years Earlier
It was raining the night Malakai told me he wanted to be with me. Not dramatic, cinematic rain. Just steady and relentless, the kind that soaked through everything and refused to stop. We were sitting in his car outside my apartment, the engine off, the windows fogging slowly. My hand rested between us on the console like it belonged there. He had been quieter than usual.
“Stacy,” he said finally, and the way he said my name made my stomach tighten. Too careful. Too deliberate.
“Yeah?” I kept my voice light, casual, like my heart wasn’t already racing.
He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. “I don’t want to do this halfway anymore.”
“Do what?” I asked, even though I knew.
“Us.” His eyes met mine fully now. No teasing. No deflection. “I don’t want late-night calls and pretending this is just whatever we’ve been calling it. I want you. Not secretly. Not temporarily. I want to be with you. For real.”
The air inside the car shifted. My pulse roared in my ears. Everything I had been craving and avoiding at the same time sat between us, solid and undeniable.
“Say something,” he murmured.
I should have said yes. I should have leaned across that console and kissed him and let the world rearrange itself around us. Instead, fear crawled up my spine.
“What if we ruin this?” I said quietly.
His brows drew together. “Ruin what?”
“What we have. What if we try and it falls apart? What if we don’t work? What if we lose each other completely?”
His jaw tightened slightly. “Stacy, we already don’t have each other completely.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“It is,” he said, not angry, just honest. “You’re scared.”
“Yes,” I admitted before I could stop myself. The word hung between us, heavy and exposed.
“Scared of me?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Scared of how much I—” I stopped.
His eyes softened. “How much you what?”
I looked away because if I finished that sentence, there would be no turning back.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
Silence filled the car, broken only by rain tapping harder against the windshield.
“You can’t,” he repeated.
“I don’t want to lose you,” I said, even though I was actively pushing him away.
A quiet breath left him. “You think saying no protects us?”
Tears burned behind my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “Maybe it does.”
He leaned back slowly, like something inside him had just shifted out of place. “I don’t do halfway, Stacy. If you don’t want this, I need to know.”
I swallowed. “I don’t.” The lie tasted like metal.
He nodded once. Not dramatically. Not angrily. Just once. “Okay.”
That was the worst part. The okay.
He started the engine. The warmth between us evaporated. When he pulled up to my apartment door, neither of us moved at first.
“Goodnight, Stacy,” he said. Not baby. Not the nickname he used when we were alone. Just my name.
I opened the door before I could change my mind. And as I stepped out into the rain, I felt it. The exact moment I lost him. I don’t remember unlocking the door. I just remember the sound of it closing behind me and the way the apartment felt too small for the storm inside my chest. Everything looked exactly the same. Kayla’s shoes kicked off by the door. Leigh’s half-folded laundry abandoned on the couch. The vanilla candle we always forget to blow out still burning like nothing in the world has shifted. And I stand there thinking, how is everything so normal when I just detonated my own life?
“Nova?” Kayla calls from the kitchen.
My throat closes.
If I speak, I will shatter.
Kayla appears first, wiping her hands on a towel. Leigh steps out from behind her, curious at first. Then both of them see my face.
And I’m gone.
The tears hit without permission. Not soft. Not poetic. They tear through me like something breaking loose after being held back too long. My bag slips from my fingers and lands on the floor with a dull thud. My hands are shaking. I press them to my eyes like I can physically push the feelings back in.
“Oh no,” Kayla breathes, already crossing the room.
She wraps her arms around me and I collapse into her like I’ve been waiting to.
“I messed up,” I choke into her shoulder. “I messed up so badly.”
“What happened?” she murmurs, steady and warm and solid.
Leigh’s voice comes quieter. Sharper. “It was Malakai, wasn’t it?”
I nod.
Saying it out loud feels impossible, so I whisper it. “He told me he wants to be with me. Not casually. Not eventually. Now.”
Kayla pulls back just enough to look at me. “Okay… and?”
“I said no.”
The silence is instant.
Kayla blinks. “You said no?”
I nod again and the tears come harder, like my body is punishing me for it. “I couldn’t risk it. If it goes wrong, I lose him. I lose my best friend. I lose everything.”
Kayla cups my face gently. “Nova, you look like you’re losing him anyway.”
That lands somewhere deep.
Leigh exhales slowly and I don’t even have to look at her to feel it. That shift in her energy. That quiet disbelief.
“Why would you say no?” she asks.
It’s not cruel. It’s not loud. It’s worse. It’s honest.
“Because it could ruin everything,” I snap, and then instantly regret the edge in my voice. “I’m sorry. I just… I can’t survive losing him.”
“You don’t know that you would,” Kayla says.
“But I don’t know that I wouldn’t,” I whisper back.
Leigh sits down, watching me like she’s trying to solve a puzzle I’ve scrambled on purpose. “He’s been in love with you for years,” she says quietly. “You know that, right?”
My silence betrays me.
“And you feel it too,” she continues. “So what exactly are you protecting yourself from?”
From happiness, a voice in my head answers. From something too big to control.
“Happy things don’t stay,” I say before I can stop myself.
The room goes still.
Kayla squeezes my hands. “That’s not a rule.”
“It is for me,” I whisper.
Leigh’s jaw tightens just slightly. “Or maybe,” she says carefully, “you’re just scared of something that actually matters.”
The words sting because they’re not wrong.
I sink down onto the couch, covering my face. “I can’t lose him.”
Leigh’s voice softens, but there’s something underneath it. Frustration. Maybe even disappointment. “And what if you just lost your chance instead?”
That thought slices clean through me.
Kayla immediately shoots her a look. “Okay. We are not doing hypotheticals tonight.”
She turns back to me, brushing my hair away from my face. “You don’t have to figure out your entire future in one conversation. You’re allowed to be scared.”
I nod, but the fear isn’t the only thing twisting inside me.
Because beneath the panic…
Beneath the tears…
There’s something worse.
Regret.
And I hate that I already feel it.
- Writer
