Chapter Five – A Beautiful Ache
Hazel stirred her coffee three times clockwise, once counter. She didn't know why she always did that. Ritual, maybe. A way to feel like something in her life still made sense.
Across the café, Samuel laughed with her coworker Mara, waving his hands like he was telling some harmless story. He looked warm. Familiar. Good.
Hazel smiled when he glanced at her. The kind of smile she'd learned to wear even when something inside her was crumbling.
"Dinner tonight?" he asked as he walked over, slipping a hand around her waist.
She nodded. "Yeah. Sure."
But dinner felt like dressing a wound with silk. The food tasted bland. Samuel's touch—once electric—felt safe. Too safe.
Her mind wandered.
To a rooftop.
To fingers grazing her jaw.
To lips that hadn't rushed.
And the silence that followed.
No text.
No call.
No sign of him.
It shouldn't have mattered.
But it did.
The note came the next day.
Folded once, slipped into her locker like a secret. No name. No handwriting she recognized. Just five words, carved in black ink:
"The sky misses you tonight."
She read it three times, then once more aloud. Her breath caught on the last word.
That night, she stood on her rooftop with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and the letter in her hand. Wind kissed her cheeks. City lights blurred below.
And he was there.
As always. Across the skyline. Still. Watching.
She didn't wave. Didn't move.
He didn't either.
But she knew.
Later, lying beside Samuel in the dark, she whispered a truth she would never say out loud:
"I don't want to be saved."
She wanted this ache.
Wanted it like a bruise she pressed just to feel something deeper.
She didn't want comfort. She wanted chaos wrapped in tenderness.
She wanted to feel wanted. Not loved. Not yet.
Wanted.
Hazel traced her lips in the dark, remembering. Not the kiss.
But the way it had changed the air between her ribs.
And somewhere across the city, Henry stood barefoot on marble floors, whiskey untouched in his hand, watching a rooftop gone quiet.
He didn't smile.
He just waited.