Finding light in the darkest places—through love

A soft drizzle coated the city streets in a thin veil of silver, the neon lights reflecting off the wet pavement like shattered fragments of a forgotten dream.

Evelyn Carter sat alone on a bus stop bench, her hands clenched into tight fists inside the sleeves of her oversized hoodie.

The damp chill of the night seeped into her skin, but she hardly noticed.

Her chest felt heavier than usual tonight, a dull ache pressing against her ribs—familiar, suffocating.

The silence had weight.

A presence.

Her phone vibrated.

Another message.

Another demand.

[ Mom ]: You should've come home, Evelyn.

You know what happens when you don't listen.

Her grip on the phone tightened, but she didn't respond.

Not this time.

For the first time in her life, she had chosen to run.

Westbridge University.

A new start.

A place where no one knew her, where she could disappear into the background and pretend she didn't exist.

That was the plan.

But plans had a way of falling apart.

"Yo, you waiting for the bus too?"

The voice was bright—too bright for the storm brewing inside her.

She looked up.

And there he was.

Adrian West.

Drenched from the rain, completely unfazed, his stupidly confident grin shining through the downpour.

A basketball under one arm, his hoodie pulled up against the cold.

She should've ignored him.

She should've looked away, buried herself deeper in her own world like she always did.

But something about him was different.

Maybe it was the way he didn't seem bothered by the silence between them.

Maybe it was the way he wasn't afraid to be loud in a world that had taught her to be small.

Or maybe—just maybe—it was the way he looked at her, like he saw her.

And for the first time in a long time, she wondered…

What if running away wasn't the same as being free?