The house was quieter than usual, though nothing had changed. The same photos lined up in the hallway, family trips, birthdays, my father's warm smile frozen forever in frames.
Yet as I wandered from room to room, it all felt... distant.
Maybe it's me who has changed.
While at the Donovan's, everything was grand, sprawling alive with all the voices and footsteps.
Here, it's only me and my Mom, moving through our quiet routines. It should have been a familiar comfort. Instead, I felt restless, as though a piece of me had been left behind at the other side.
I sat by the window in my room, and the sketchbook balanced on my lap with a pencil hovering uselessly all over the page.
My mind refused to settle. Every time I tried to focus, his face would appear.
Tristan Donovan, with those unreadable eyes and that steady voice that still echoed in my chest.
I pressed my pencil harder to the page, shading in the curve of a jaw that looked far too much like his. With a frustrated sigh, I shut the sketchbook and pushed it aside.
"Why him? Why now?"
It wasn't as though I hadn't seen Tristan before. We'd crossed paths as kids, way too many times. Back when Sophia and I were inseparable, back before the Donovan's moved away.
He'd been older then, distant and more shadows than presence.
Yet somehow, in just a few days, he had undone the careful walls I had built around my heart.
A soft knock interrupted my thoughts. Mom stepped in, carrying a small plate of sliced apples. "You've been holed up all day, my dear," she said gently, setting the plate on my desk.
"I'm sorry," I murmured.
She smiled, brushing my hair like she used to when I was little. "Don't apologize, darling. Just don't lose yourself in the past, Ellie. You know you deserve more than that."
Her words lodged deep, though she couldn't have known what storm they stirred inside me.
If only the past were the problem but it wasn't, it was the present.
The Donovan estate, the library, the memory of Tristan's breath so close to mine, refused to leave my mind alone.
That night, as I lay in bed, I tried to focus on Mom's steady breathing down the hall, the comfort of being home to help me settle down.
But sleep was never easy. I feel I've been losing my sleep for many days since my last sleepover at the Donovan's.
My mind refused to settle, not when the echo of Tristan's voice lingered in the quiet.
It's the same word, echoing again and again.
"I won't let the rain take you too."
I curled tighter beneath my covers, whispering into the dark as if the words might tether me back to sanity.
"He's not mine. He is never mine." I keep repeating in my mind. But my restless heart didn't seem to believe me.
I was too deep in my thinking when the sound of my phone vibrating on the nightstand startled me. I fumbled for it, expecting a message from Sophia.
But my heart stuttered when I saw the name on the screen.
Tristan Donovan.