"It wasn't a scream. Not even a word. Just a pause between two sentences. And that's when it started to break."
The wind came up that day without warning—like a truth one tries hard to ignore. It swept through the cobbled streets, rustling the golden leaves of early autumn. September had arrived, quiet but firm, and with it came a shift—subtle, yet undeniable.
They met at their usual café, the one where light filtered gently through misted windows and fell softly onto worn wooden tables. It was a Saturday, just like any other. She thought it ordinary. He felt it heavy.
Élise stirred her hot chocolate absentmindedly, her eyes wandering somewhere between the tiled floor and the foggy glass. Alex watched her—not accusingly, not even sadly—but with that dull ache you feel when something begins to unravel, and you can't quite tell where it started.
"You're somewhere else," he finally said, his voice too gentle to sound reproachful.
She looked up, startled that he had spoken. She opened her mouth, closed it, and sighed.
"There are things I don't know how to say anymore, Alex."
He looked down, his fingers tracing the rim of his coffee cup. The rain had begun to fall, a soft rhythm on the glass, like punctuation to the tension building between them.
That day, there were no big confessions. No betrayals. No rage. Just a quiet disintegration. A slippage. Like stone eroded by time, their connection was losing shape.
It was only later that he realized: that was the first crack.
That night, he didn't sleep. She had left the café with a kiss on the cheek and a half-smile. No goodbye. Just the sensation that she had already started leaving long before her body did.
He opened the black notebook he'd kept since he was sixteen and wrote:
"Today, something cracked. I don't know what. But I heard it. It wasn't a sound—it was a space."
The following days were... strange. Too normal. She texted, yes—but briefly, distantly. Emoticons with no warmth. He replied like a robot, refusing to believe what his gut already knew.
Camille, his closest friend, met him for a drink a few nights later.
"You're not really here," Camille said, tilting their head. "Is it Élise again?"
Alex nodded, the lump in his throat growing.
"She's here... but not really. It's like she's slowly fading and I can't hold on."
Camille looked at him, steady and sad.
"Sometimes people don't leave because they don't love us anymore. They leave because they've forgotten how to love at all."
He didn't respond. But the sentence stayed with him like a thorn lodged in memory.
A week later, he found the letter.
It was one of those endless, gray afternoons. He had gone to her apartment to return a book she'd forgotten. She'd given him a spare key months ago, but he hadn't used it in a long time.
Everything was the same. Too much the same. As if time had paused. The scent of cinnamon still hung in the air. Her red poetry notebook lay open on the couch. And there, on the edge of the desk, sat an envelope.
It wasn't sealed. Just left there, as if by accident. His name written in thick black ink.
ALEX.
He stared at it. His hands trembled.
Then, he opened it.
"I'm writing this because I can't find the courage to say it out loud. Maybe I'll never give you this letter. Maybe I'll burn it. But if one day you read these words, know this: I loved you. Truly. But something inside me cracked, and I don't know how to fix it. It's not your fault. You're wonderful. But sometimes love isn't enough. There's a hole in me I thought I could fill with you. But it keeps pulling me back into myself."
He didn't read the rest.
He placed the letter exactly where he found it.
He never knew if she had meant for him to see it—or if he had violated something sacred. But either way, those words stayed lodged in his chest like shards of glass.
The days turned into weeks. The silences became routine. Their meetings were brief, strained. She stayed—physically—but emotionally, she was already miles away.
One evening, while walking together through the old neighborhood, she stopped suddenly.
"Do you remember the bench?" she asked.
Of course, he remembered. That old stone bench near the square—the place they shared their first real kiss. She had been wearing her red dress, and the sun had taken its time setting that day.
"It all feels so far away now," she whispered.
He looked at her, heart cracking.
"Not to me. To me, it was yesterday."
She met his gaze for a moment, then looked away.
And in that silence, he understood: the past didn't shine the same for both of them. For her, it was a memory. For him, it was a home.
And then came the sentence.
It wasn't shouted. It wasn't cruel. It was exhausted.
She had been trying to explain her fears—her doubts about the future. He cut her off.
"If you're not sure about us... maybe you shouldn't stay."
She froze.
Her eyes filled with tears, but she said nothing.
And the silence after that sentence was louder than any scream.
She didn't reply to his messages the next day. Or the next. Or the one after that.
He waited. Three days. Then a week.
He thought of the letter. Of the moment in the café. Of the words he hadn't meant. Of the ones she had never dared to say out loud.
So he wrote.
He poured his heart into pages. Desperation, regret, love, pain. Everything he had failed to tell her, he wrote now. In ink. In tears.
And he never sent it.
The letter stayed in his drawer, beside a photograph of her in that red dress, taken during the summer when everything felt endless.
A month later, he passed by their café. Out of habit—or out of hope.
He sat at their table. Ordered two coffees.
One stayed untouched.
The other grew cold.
He drank it slowly, bitter and lukewarm. Exactly like the one he'd had the morning they first met.
Everything was still there. But nothing felt the same.
That night, he dreamed of her.
She was standing on a platform, waiting for a train. She smiled, but her eyes were full of sorrow.
"I have to go," she said. "But remember... just because something ends doesn't mean it wasn't beautiful."
He reached out.
But the train doors closed.
He woke up to silence.
And the emptiness returned.
"The crack wasn't an explosion. It was a slow fracture. A thin, invisible line that split the foundation of what we were. And I watched the pieces drift apart, not knowing how to keep them together."
Cliffhanger for Chapter 6:
He opens an old novel she once gave him—and a photo slips out. On the back, her handwriting:
"If one day you want to understand, go back to where it all began."
His pulse quickens. The bench? The square? Or something deeper?
He has to choose: go back—or finally let go.
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