The rain had just started again soft at first, then heavier, drumming against the glass walls of the gallery. Inside, light spilled over smooth floors and polished frames, casting quiet reflections that looked almost alive.
Starling stood near one of her paintings a smear of color and memory that felt more like confession than art. People moved around her, voices blending into background hums. She smiled when someone complimented her work, but her heart wasn't really there. Not tonight.
She had waited years for this her first exhibition since everything fell apart. Since she lost her trust, her home, her sense of safety. Since she learned that love could shatter as quickly as it bloomed.
Then she heard a voice behind her.
Low. Calm. Too familiar.
"You never changed your style," he said. "Still painting feelings you shouldn't."
Her spine went still.
That voice.
She turned slowly and there he was. Elijah.
The man who had touched the edges of her old life without ever being part of it. The man tied to the ruin that nearly destroyed her. His presence pulled every old ache to the surface grief, longing, anger like colors she couldn't blend away.
He looked the same, only colder. A tailored suit, rain still clinging to his shoulders, that unshakable confidence he wore like a second skin.
The city outside blurred behind him, neon and stormlight framing him like a ghost she wasn't ready to see.
"You shouldn't be here," she said softly.
He smiled not cruelly, but as if he didn't know how else to exist.
"You're the one who invited the world, Starling. I just came with it."
Her heart beat faster, betraying her calm. She wanted to hate him, but her body remembered everything the late night conversations, the near touch, the safety she once thought he offered.
Before she found out who he was connected to.
Before it all fell apart.
For a moment, neither spoke. The silence between them was louder than the rain.
"You lost everything once," he said finally, eyes on her painting. "Tell me, Starling was it worth what it cost you?"
Her breath caught, but she didn't look away.
"Maybe not," she whispered. "But at least now… I know what my art costs."
And when she turned back to face him fully, the old world tilted again love, loss, and danger colliding under the city lights.
Starling forced herself to breathe evenly. The room felt smaller now, the hum of voices fading into static as her pulse filled the silence.
"You shouldn't talk to me like we still know each other," she said, trying to sound composed.
Elijah's gaze softened, but his tone didn't.
"You think time changes that? You think I stopped knowing you just because I stayed away?"
She almost laughed sharp, humorless.
"You didn't stay away, Elijah. You disappeared."
He tilted his head slightly, studying her.
"You wanted me gone."
"And you made sure of it."
That landed between them like a stone dropped in still water quiet, but rippling with old pain.
Starling turned back to her painting, trying to hide how her hands trembled. It was a portrait abstract, fragmented, a study of two faces half-merged, half-broken. She had painted it months ago without realizing whose eyes she'd painted into the shadows.
Elijah's.
"This one," he said, stepping closer. "It's us, isn't it?"
She didn't answer.
He stood just behind her now, close enough that she could feel his breath disturb the loose strands of her hair.
"You should go," she murmured.
"I tried," he replied. "For years."
There was no apology in his voice only honesty, and something heavier she didn't want to name.
The lights flickered slightly as thunder rolled outside. Someone called her name from across the room, but she didn't move.
"What do you want, Elijah?" she asked finally.
"To understand," he said quietly. "To see what I ruined even if I didn't mean to."
Her throat tightened.
"You didn't ruin it," she said. "You just stood close enough to watch while someone else did."
That silenced him. For the first time, his confidence cracked just barely and she saw guilt flicker across his eyes.
He looked away first.
"You're right," he said. "But I'm here now."
"That's the problem," she whispered.
She stepped back, creating distance that didn't feel like enough. The scent of rain and paint lingered between them clean, sharp, too intimate.
"You shouldn't have come, Elijah," she said again, softer this time.
He looked at her then really looked and there was something in his expression that made her heart falter.
"Maybe," he said. "But tell me the truth, Starling. If I hadn't… would you have ever stopped painting me?"
She froze.
Because the truth the one she'd buried beneath every color, every brushstroke was no.
The storm outside had settled into a soft drizzle, the kind that whispered against the windows and blurred the city lights into watercolor streaks. Guests moved through the gallery in slow waves, unaware that the air had shifted that something old and fragile had been stirred back to life.
Elijah didn't speak again for a while. He just stood there, his presence heavy but calm, eyes tracing her face like he was trying to memorize it all over again.
Starling couldn't hold his gaze anymore. She turned away, pretending to arrange something on the nearby table a glass of champagne, a folded program, anything to avoid what her heart was doing.
"You said you wanted to understand," she said quietly. "But understanding doesn't fix the past."
"No," Elijah replied, his voice low. "But it might stop it from repeating."
She felt that too deeply. The ache of almost believing him again.
For a moment, she wondered what would've happened if things had been different. If he hadn't been connected to the person who destroyed her trust. If their timing hadn't been poisoned by guilt and circumstance.
But life wasn't built on ifs. It was built on choices.
And she had already made hers.
"I have nothing left to give you," she said, her tone calm but final. "Not even forgiveness."
He took a step back, hands sliding into his pockets the way he always did when he was trying to hide something.
"I'm not here for forgiveness, Starling."
"Then why are you here?"
His answer was quiet, but it struck her like thunder.
"Because I still dream about the night you stopped trusting me."
Her breath hitched. He didn't wait for a reply.
He turned and walked away slow, deliberate his footsteps echoing against the gallery floor. She watched him go, her reflection trembling faintly in the glass as the door opened and the city swallowed him whole.
The rain began again, soft and endless.
Starling pressed a hand against her chest, feeling her pulse. Somewhere deep inside, beneath all the anger and fear, something she thought was dead began to stir again unwanted, but alive.
You shouldn't have come back, she thought.
Because now I don't know if I want you gone again.
Outside, the city glowed a maze of light and shadow.
And for the first time in years, Starling couldn't tell which one she belonged to.