It rained that night.
A soft, mournful drizzle that tapped against the windowpanes like fingers searching for a pulse. Alia didn't light a candle this time. She simply sat on the windowsill, Micah's last letter in her hands, her reflection faint in the glass.
"I'll tell you... but only if you're ready to read the part of my story I've never told anyone else."
She was ready.
She had no idea what it would cost her.
---
The Next Morning
The letter arrived tucked into the back of a first edition poetry book—W.H. Auden's Tell Me the Truth About Love—left gently on the writing desk. The pages were worn. The placement intentional.
Alia opened it slowly.
> "When I was nineteen, I lost someone."
> "Her name was Claire. She was the kind of girl who made everything feel like spring even in winter. I met her here—at the bookshop. My grandfather gave her a job. I gave her my heart."
> "She died in a car accident six months later."
Alia's breath caught.
> "I never wrote another poem after that."
> "I left Greyhaven. I ran from the shop, from my grandfather, from every street we ever walked together. And when Ezra died, I promised I'd come back just once—to sell the place and leave it behind for good."
> "And then you arrived."
Alia blinked rapidly, fingers tightening around the page.
> "I don't know why I started writing to you. Maybe it was the way you looked at the typewriter like it could hurt you and heal you at the same time. Maybe it was the way you moved—quiet, careful, like someone who knows what it means to lose something and still choose to stay."
> "I haven't stopped thinking about you since the first night I saw you in the window. Not because you remind me of Claire."
> "But because you don't."
> "You feel like the first new sentence in a story I didn't think I'd ever write again."
> — Micah
---
Alia folded the letter slowly, pressing her palm to the paper. For a long time, she didn't move.
She knew loss.
She knew the taste of it in her mouth, the weight of it in her bones. But something about Micah's grief felt quieter—like an unfinished song humming between the pages of a book.
Not needing to be fixed.
Just needing to be heard.
---
That Night
She didn't write him a letter.
She went down to the bookshop instead.
She found him standing in the poetry aisle, his back to her, the same dark coat, the same storm-gray eyes when he turned and saw her.
They stood there, inches apart. Neither spoke.
Then softly, Alia said:
"You don't have to keep hiding in the margins, Micah."
His throat moved.
"I don't know how to be read anymore," he said.
She stepped forward. "Then let me learn your story—one page at a time."
He didn't reach for her. But he didn't leave either.
And in that stillness, between rain-damp shelves and too many unread books, something broke open.
Not their hearts.
But their silence.
---