The city had grown quieter since the storm.
Rain left silver veins along the streets, the kind of beauty that fades the moment you look away. Inside Adrian's studio, the world was still canvases half-finished, brushes drying in jars, and the faint scent of turpentine hanging in the air.
Elara stood by the window, tracing her reflection in the glass. She used to find peace in his silence. Now, that same quiet pressed against her like a wall.
Adrian was behind her, sketching again. She could feel every movement of his hand the scratch of pencil on paper like a heartbeat she couldn't hear anymore.
"You've been drawing the same thing for days," she said softly.
Adrian didn't look up. "Perfection takes time."
"Or maybe you're afraid to finish it."
He paused, just for a moment. The pencil trembled slightly in his hand.
When he finally turned toward her, his expression was unreadable calm, almost detached, but his eyes carried the weight of something he wasn't ready to say.
"You don't understand," he murmured.
"Then help me," Elara replied. "Stop hiding behind your art, Adrian. I'm still here."
Silence again. The kind that doesn't fill rooms but empties them.
He rose, walked toward her, and stopped just close enough for their reflections to merge in the window.
"Every time I draw," he said quietly, "I see the faces of people I've lost. I thought loving you would silence them… but it only made them louder."
Elara's breath hitched. She wanted to touch him, but something in his voice made her hands freeze.
"You can't keep living with ghosts," she whispered.
"And you can't save a man who's built from them."
The words struck deep, like glass splintering under pressure.
Outside, thunder rolled again faint, distant, yet heavy with memory.
Elara turned away, her voice trembling. "Maybe I just wanted to believe that love was enough."
"It is," Adrian said, almost desperate. "But love doesn't erase what's broken. It just teaches us to look at it without turning away."
For a moment, their eyes met. It wasn't a stare it was a plea.
But before either could bridge the distance, his phone rang.
A name flashed across the screen one Elara didn't recognize, but the tone in his face told her it wasn't just anyone.
She took a slow step back. "You should answer that."
"Elara, wait"
But she was already walking toward the door, each step heavier than the last.
He didn't stop her.
He just stood there, watching the space she left behind, the silence swelling until it became unbearable.
When the call ended, Adrian stared at the half-finished canvas her face, again and again, in different shades of grief and light. He pressed his hand against it, leaving a faint smudge of charcoal.
"You're still the only thing I can't draw right," he whispered.
That night, Elara wandered the rain-lit streets of London.
Every reflection in the puddles looked like him fragments of a man she wanted to love, but couldn't reach. She passed by a gallery window and froze. There, in the display, hung one of Adrian's old paintings a woman facing the sea, her silhouette bleeding into the horizon.
For the first time, Elara realized the truth.
He wasn't building art to remember.
He was building it to never forget.
Her tears came quietly, unnoticed by the city lights.
And somewhere across London, Adrian stood at his balcony, eyes on the same horizon, whispering her name into the wind a name that the night carried back to her like a prayer unanswered.
The next morning came dressed in a pale gray light.
The storm had passed, but the air still smelled like something unfinished like a promise that had been left overnight in the rain. Adrian hadn't slept. His studio was a mess of sketches, torn pages, and fading candle wax. Somewhere between exhaustion and longing, he realized he'd drawn her again not perfectly, but enough to hurt.
The doorbell rang.
For a heartbeat, he hoped it was Elara.
It wasn't.
Marcus stood there Elara's friend from the gallery. Clean-cut, sharp-eyed, the kind of man who always seemed to know more than he said.
"She didn't come home last night," Marcus said without greeting. "Do you know where she went?"
Adrian blinked, disoriented. "She left after the call. I thought she'd go back to her apartment."
Marcus sighed, crossing his arms. "You should've followed her. She's breaking, Adrian. Whatever you're hiding from her it's starting to destroy her too."
The words hit harder than Marcus could have known.
Adrian wanted to explain about the calls, the accusations, the guilt that never faded but the truth still felt poisonous on his tongue.
"I can't tell her," he said, voice low. "Not yet."
Marcus gave him a look filled with quiet disappointment. "Then don't expect her to wait forever."
When Marcus left, Adrian sank into the couch, staring at the empty space beside him. His hands trembled, reaching for his sketchbook the one Elara had touched last. Her fingerprint was still faintly visible on the corner of a page. It was absurd, he thought, how something so small could feel like gravity.
Across the city, Elara sat by the river.
She hadn't planned to end up there her feet simply carried her. The water was calm now, reflecting the soft blush of dawn. She opened her sketchpad, the pages untouched for weeks. For the first time since meeting Adrian, she began to draw not him, but herself.
Each line came out raw, fragile, but honest. She drew the way her shoulders curved under the weight of unspoken things, the way her eyes never looked directly at her reflection. It wasn't beautiful, but it was real.
An old man feeding pigeons nearby glanced at her work.
"You draw like someone trying to remember who they were," he said gently.
Elara smiled faintly. "Maybe that's all I've been doing."
"Then stop remembering," he replied, tossing another crumb into the air. "Start becoming."
The words stayed with her long after he left.
The wind lifted her hair, the river shimmered, and for the first time, she didn't feel entirely broken just unfinished.
By evening, Adrian found himself walking toward the gallery without thinking. The place was dimly lit, quiet. He moved past the displays until he reached the center where Elara's unfinished painting had once been. Now, there was a new canvas standing under soft light.
It was her work.
Her colors.
Her pain.
He stared, frozen, as the strokes unfolded the story she couldn't say aloud his silhouette dissolving into the red horizon, her hands reaching for something that was already gone.
A whisper left his lips. "You painted goodbye."
He wanted to laugh. To scream. To destroy it. But instead, he just stood there letting the art do what words could not. Around him, the gallery's silence felt sacred, like the space between two prayers that would never meet.
When he stepped out into the night, London looked different.
Not colder just clearer. Every raindrop on the glass, every reflection in the puddles, felt like a fragment of truth he'd ignored too long.
He took out his phone, scrolling through old messages, his thumb hovering over her name.Then he typed, "I'm sorry. I still see you everywhere."
He didn't send it.
He just let the message sit there, glowing in the dark like a secret confession.
And somewhere across the city, under the same washed-out moon, Elara looked up from her window, whispering his name as if she'd heard him anyway.