The morning after the storm felt too still.
The streets were damp with apology, the gutters still murmuring runoff in sleepy trickles. Dawnmere smelled like wet stone, rosemary, and new beginnings that didn't know what to do with themselves.
Isla stood in her kitchen barefoot, hair still damp from her shower, sleeves rolled to her elbows as she stared down a chipped white mug. It was filled with lemon tea and the last of her stolen honey packets from the café. She didn't even like lemon tea. But he had smelled like it yesterday.
She hated that she noticed that.
Her phone buzzed. One text. Unknown number.
> Storm's passed. Sun came out. The mural's holding, but she's sulking. Thought you'd want to know.
– L
She stared at the screen for a long, pulsing second.
Then she texted back.
> Murals don't sulk. They silently judge.
A few seconds later:
> Same thing.
Come by. I'll make coffee. Or... tea.
If you bring more honey, I won't ask where it came from.
Her stomach flipped.
Twice.
---
Twenty-five minutes later, Isla was back in the studio, the door creaking open on that same familiar scent: cedarwood, something citrusy, and the faint metallic tang of turpentine. The one-eyed cat blinked at her from its throne of flannel blankets, meowed once like a judgment, then curled back into itself.
Lennox didn't look up right away. He was at the far end of the room, hands deep in a crate of canvases, a pencil tucked behind his ear, his black T-shirt clinging just a bit too tightly to his back. He looked like a man who hadn't slept but had made peace with it.
"You came," he said without turning.
"You texted."
"That's not an answer."
She smirked. "And yet it worked."
He finally looked over his shoulder, eyes sweeping her in one slow, thoughtful pass.
Bare skin where her sweater slipped off her shoulder.
A single freckle at the base of her neck.
The sharp twist of a girl holding herself too tightly.
"You hungry?"
"Only for answers."
He raised an eyebrow. "Dangerous kind of hunger."
"I like dangerous."
The room went quiet.
There it was again. That low thrum between them—like the last string of a cello, trembling just before it breaks.
He gestured to the small kitchen nook on the left, where a French press sat waiting beside mismatched mugs. "I made the tea. No promises."
"Is that what your last girlfriend said?"
That stopped him.
Dead still.
A beat of silence passed.
Then another.
She nearly apologized. Nearly.
But then he said, "No. She didn't say anything at all when she left."
Isla froze.
"I'm sorry," she murmured.
He just shrugged. But it wasn't casual—it was careful.
"She left a note," he said finally. "Folded into one of my sketchbooks. Four sentences. One of them wasn't even a full thought."
"What did it say?"
He didn't answer right away.
Instead, he poured the tea. Passed her the mug.
She took it with both hands. Felt the heat bite her palms.
Then he said, quietly, "It said: You don't let people stay. Not really. You just draw them and pretend it's enough."
The words hung in the air like smoke.
Isla didn't look at him.
She looked at the floor. Then the cat. Then the painting on the wall behind them—unfinished, of course. The girl's hair was all wild swirls of stormlight now. Her eyes were still missing.
"I stayed," Isla said finally. "During the rain. I didn't have to."
"I know."
"You didn't ask me to."
"I know."
She looked up. "So why didn't you let me go?"
He met her eyes then, something almost feral in the softness of it. Like tenderness could be dangerous. Like honesty might cost more than it's worth.
"Because," he said, voice low, "you're not a sketch in my head. You're the page I didn't think I'd ever find again."
And there it was.
The first crack.
Small. Barely a fracture. But the kind that would spread if pressed.
They didn't kiss.
Not yet.
But the silence that followed wasn't awkward.
It was intimate.
Like a secret only they knew.
And when Isla finally turned to go, tea cooling in her hands, she paused at the door, then looked back.
"I'll come back," she said softly. "But only if you start giving her eyes."
Lennox looked at the mural.
At her.
And nodded.