“This doesn’t feel real,” Ava whispered the second the door clicked shut behind her.
Her hands shook as she pressed her back against the wood, trying to slow her breathing. But the air inside felt just as heavy as the night she’d left behind—like midnight had followed her home and refused to let go.
She pulled in a shaky breath. ‘Get it together,’ she muttered, shoving her coat off her shoulders. It slid down her arms and dropped to the floor with barely a sound.
No echo. No weight.
Like even gravity didn’t believe she belonged here.
She stepped forward, her heels silent against the polished wood, the kind of silence that made her skin crawl. Her apartment looked exactly the same—flawless. Cold. Magazine-ready.
“Too clean,” she said under her breath, eyes darting around. “Too… still.”
The furniture was untouched. The air smelled like lavender and something sharper—sterile, maybe. The scent of a life curated, not lived.
She passed her kitchen counter, her fingers brushing the edge. “Did I really build all this?” she whispered, voice tight.
Everything was in place—perfectly in place—but she wasn’t.
“This isn’t mine,” she said suddenly, her voice rising just enough to echo off the glass windows. “It looks like mine. But it isn’t.”
Her pulse pounded in her ears. She crossed the room slowly, heading toward the window. The skyline glowed outside, towers of light against the dark.
“It’s all here,” she murmured, voice shaking. “Everything I worked for. Everything I wanted.”
Ava’s eyes caught the faint, steady glow from her wrist. The watch. It wasn’t flickering anymore, not erratic like before. It pulsed gently, like it was breathing with her.
She looked down at it, feeling a strange kind of pull. The edges of the glass glowed red, like a warning, like it was trying to tell her something she wasn’t ready to hear.
A shiver ran through her as she took a slow step further into the apartment. She was moving, but it felt like she wasn’t really there—like her body was going through the motions while her mind stayed somewhere else.
And then, her eyes landed on it. The envelope. It was lying on the floor just inside the door, resting against the baseboard as if it had been waiting for her.
No stamp. No markings. Just her name, scribbled in handwriting she knew too well.
Her heart stopped, the words on the envelope pulling her forward like a force she couldn’t fight. She didn’t need to open it to know who it was from.
Ava reached for it, her fingers shaking as she picked it up.
“Jace,” she breathed.
She didn’t question how it had gotten here. Not yet. She carried it into the living room, sat on the edge of her couch, and opened the flap with shaking hands. One folded sheet. Cream paper. No date. Just ink. Her eyes scanned the first line and everything inside her collapsed.
‘I waited. Even when you left. Even when I thought you’d forget me.’ Her breath hitched. Her fingers tightened. ‘Because loving you was the only thing I did right.’
Ava pressed a hand to her mouth. The words blurred. The room tilted. The floor felt like it might give out. She kept reading.
‘I thought time would take you from me. That one day I’d wake up and not remember the sound of your laugh. But I never forgot. Not one second. Not one version of you. The girl in the hallway. The one in the stall. The one who stood up to me when I was too broken to stop hurting people.’
Ava’s hands shook violently now. The letter was a time capsule. A confession stitched from all the moments they never got to finish.
‘I ruined it. I ruined you. And I don’t expect forgiveness. I don’t even expect memory. But if this ever reaches you—if some impossible thread finds its way back to your hands—then know this: I saw you. Every time. Even when I pretended not to.’
Ava choked on a sob, clutching the page tighter. Her eyes burned. Her chest cracked open.
‘Maybe you’re somewhere else now. Someone else. Maybe time pulled you into a world where I never mattered. That’s okay. I just needed you to know—I didn’t forget. I never could. Because even if I broke you, even if I spent years pretending you didn’t live in every second of my breath, I never stopped loving you.’
Ava doubled over. Her tears hit the paper. She didn’t care. She wanted the ink to bleed, to sink into her skin, to tattoo these words into her pulse.
‘You were the first thing that made me believe I could be better. You were the first thing I ever wanted to protect. And when I failed at that, I started writing this. A piece of you I could hold in a world that never made space for softness.’
Ava gasped like air wasn’t working anymore. The letter felt like oxygen anyway.
The last paragraph was shorter. Simple. Honest.
‘If you ever read this, it means you came back. Somehow, you made it through time. Through me. Through the pain. And I hope—God, I hope—you finally see yourself the way I did. Fierce and brave. Enough.’
The signature was just one name. Jace. Nothing else. No flourish. No apology. Just him. Ava pressed the letter to her chest. Her heart thudded against it like it was trying to echo back.
She didn’t know how he wrote it. When. Why. Whether time had bent again or if some thread of his love had pushed through reality to find her.
But it had. And it was real. Her chest hurt with the weight of it.
“Jace,” she whispered. “You remembered.”
The watch on her wrist pulsed again. A deeper shade of red now. Like it had heard his name and answered.
She stood on unsteady legs and walked to the window. The city lights stretched below her. Nothing had changed out there. The world moved on. But inside her, everything had shifted.
“You found a way,” she whispered. “Even when I thought the door had closed.”
The watch glowed warmer now. It didn’t buzz. It beat. Like a heart.