Chapter 196

• Elvira
• The night pressed stretched on, thick with shadows and the faint scent of rain that had fallen hours earlier. I couldn’t sleep. Not that sleep was really the issue, it was my mind, my heart, the relentless pulling of memories and regrets that refused to let me rest. I turned over in my bed, trying to ease the ache in my chest, trying to convince myself that tomorrow would be enough. That maybe tomorrow I will be too late.
• Weeks of pushing him away, of need to find him, talk to him, to explain. But the truth I could no longer escape was that tomorrow had him at arm’s length, of pretending I didn’t care… it had built walls between us that felt insurmountable. And yet here I was, unable to resist the pull any longer. The thought of him haunted me with a constant, sharp ache, like the edge of a blade pressed against my ribs. Every moment I had spent avoiding him, denying him, had only made me more desperate to see him, to make things right, to touch him again.