Summer had just started, but the heat didn't scare them.
It was the first season in a long time where Ronan Wolfe and Aria Lane weren't hiding. Not from whispers, not from exes, not from the parts of themselves that used to feel too damaged to love.
Freedom tasted like late-night walks, shared playlists, sweat-slicked hands under starlight. It sounded like laughter echoing in quiet streets, like brushes against canvas, like Ronan reading out loud from her sketchbook—badly, awkwardly, but with so much heart she couldn't stop smiling.
For once, they didn't need chaos to feel alive.
Aria moved into a summer sublet near the arts center. Tiny apartment, leaky kitchen sink, but the balcony overlooked the city skyline—and that was enough for her.
Ronan was crashing in an off-campus loft with Carter and two other guys from the team. The fridge was always empty, the place smelled vaguely like pizza and gym socks, but it was his. Not his dad's. Not anyone else's.
His father had stayed in rehab. For the first time in years.
They'd spoken once—ten minutes on the phone, both of them unsure how to fill the silence.
"He sounded... small," Ronan told Aria that night.
"You mean human?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Like someone who finally saw the wreckage he caused."
"And do you think he'll change?"
"I don't know. But I think I'm ready to stop letting his mistakes define me."
She kissed him. "That's what healing looks like."
One evening in late June, Aria received an email: she'd been offered a spot in a competitive artist-in-residence program in Paris. Three months. Full scholarship. A dream she hadn't dared speak out loud in a year.
She froze as she read the acceptance twice, then a third time.
Ronan found her sitting on her balcony, phone clutched in her hand, tears silently running down her cheeks.
"What's wrong?" he said, rushing toward her.
"I got it," she whispered. "The Paris program."
His eyes widened. "Wait—the program? That one where like five people get picked?"
She nodded.
A beat passed.
Then he laughed—wild, full of wonder. He grabbed her, lifted her off the ground, spun her until she couldn't breathe from laughing.
"You're amazing," he said into her hair. "God, Aria, you're going to take over the world."
But then the silence returned. Heavy. Unspoken.
Paris. Three months. Thousands of miles away.
Later, as the moon hung over the city like a quiet witness, they lay together on her mattress. The fan buzzed softly overhead. He traced idle circles on her back.
"You have to go," he said first.
"I know," she whispered.
"And I'll be here. When you come back."
She sat up, looking down at him. "You'd wait?"
"I'm not letting this go. Not you. Not us."
She searched his face, found no hesitation in it—just the steady certainty of someone who'd already lost too much to let go again.
"I've never loved anyone like this," she admitted.
He smiled. "I never knew what love was before you."
Their final days before her departure passed in a blur of paint-stained kisses, sunrise drives, and slow goodbyes that stretched over moments too short for what they held.
On her last night, he walked her to the airport shuttle stop. Her bags were packed, passport ready.
He handed her a small notebook. "For your sketches. And letters. Even if you don't send them."
She opened it. On the first page, in his messy scrawl, were the words:
"For every time I miss you, I'll read what you leave behind."
Tears threatened her lashes. "Ronan—"
He kissed her once, deep and slow. "You'll come back. We still have more to write."
In Paris, she painted like she was on fire. Cityscapes. Faces in cafés. Sunlight on cobblestones. But every canvas held a little shadow of him. The boy with the broken past and the untamed heart.
They Face timed. Texted. Wrote.
The letters became their ritual.
Her pages filled with sketches and poetry. His with song lyrics, memories, sometimes just "I miss you" written twelve different ways.
Back home, Ronan trained harder. He started therapy. Visited his father once, then again.
He stopped sleeping with his fists clenched.
He started reading books Aria had left behind. Fell in love with Basquiat and Bukowski. Took a summer art elective—surprised even himself with how it felt.
He stopped being just the bad boy with bruises and one-night stands.
He became someone who felt. Someone who chose.
Three months passed.
The day Aria returned, he stood at the arrivals gate, holding a single sunflower—because roses were too cliché, and she once told him sunflowers were "paintbrushes made by the sun."
When she appeared, hair wind-tossed, paint on her jeans even now—he smiled so hard it hurt.
She ran into his arms like she'd been holding her breath for 90 days.
"You kept your promise," she whispered against his neck.
"I'll always keep them. With you."
That night, they went back to the rooftop.
The same one where it all began.
She sat in his lap, head on his shoulder, sketching the skyline as he hummed a song she'd heard only in his letters.
"What now?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Now we keep building. You and me."
"No more running?"
He looked at her.
"No more running."