(Mia's POV)
The morning felt wrong.
Not loud-wrong, not dramatic-wrong — just this soft, aching dissonance humming under everything. I woke to sunlight leaking through my blinds like nothing had happened, like the universe hadn't watched me fall apart on a bridge while Ace Harrington held me together with nothing but his voice and his maddening, steady presence.
I lay still, barely breathing, hoping if I didn't move, the memory of last night would dissolve.
Hoping the world would give me permission to pretend none of it happened.
It didn't.
My phone buzzed beside my pillow — a small, insistent vibrato that made my pulse jump.
I didn't have to look to know who it was.
Ace.
Three texts.
Then one from Lily.
Then another from Ace.
I flipped the phone face-down.
Coward.
I know.
But the truth is this: feelings terrify me more than heartbreak ever has. Because heartbreak is simple — it hurts, but it's familiar. Predictable. You survive, you harden, you move.
But whatever this thing with Ace is becoming?
It's unpredictable.
Unsteady.
Real in a way I'm not ready for.
I slipped out of bed and went straight to the sink, splashing cold water on my face like I could rinse away the ghost of his hands on my shoulders, his eyes searching mine like he could read the cracks I've spent years patching.
I hated how much I remembered.
How warm he felt beside me on that bridge.
How quiet he became when I started shaking.
How his breath hitched when he said my name — like it meant something more than he wanted it to.
I hated even more how much I wanted to text him back.
Instead, I opened the group chat with Lily and James.
Lily: Babe are you okay?? You vanished.
James: We're checking on you. Don't ghost us.
Lily: Ace is freaking out btw.
Of course he is.
I tossed my phone on the couch and grabbed my laptop, determined to drown myself in work. Emails. Deadlines. Anything with neat edges and no emotions attached. But my brain refused to cooperate.
Every thought circled back to him.
His jacket around my shoulders.
His silence — gentle, patient.
His frustration, simmering under the surface like he was angry at himself more than me.
And that moment… when he walked me home, stopping just outside my building.
We stood there in the cold, two graduates in a quiet city night, breathing as if afraid to break the fragile truce between us.
He didn't try to touch me.
Didn't push.
Didn't ask me to explain.
He only said, "Get inside safe, okay?"
And my stupid traitor-heart reacted like he'd said something else. Something dangerous.
So this morning, avoiding him felt like survival.
My phone buzzed again.
Another text.
This time I looked.
Ace: Please tell me you're alright.
Just twelve words, but somehow they cracked something in me.
I powered the phone off.
Not because I didn't want to talk to him.
But because I wanted to too much.
The day slipped by in fragments — coffee I didn't drink, work I didn't finish, Lily's missed calls stacking up like guilt in voicemail form. The sun dipped, shadows climbed the walls, and I still hadn't left my apartment.
I wrapped myself in a blanket and curled on the couch, trying to breathe through the tangle of fear, longing, and confusion.
Somewhere deep down, beneath all the walls I built, I knew this silence wasn't fair to him.
But I wasn't ready.
Not yet.
And definitely not today.
(Ace's POV)
Mia has always been a hurricane — her own kind of controlled storm, contained behind a spine of steel and a voice sharpened by survival.
But silence?
That's not her.
So when she didn't reply this morning… or this afternoon… or hours later…
Yeah. It got to me.
Lily nearly strangled me through the phone.
James told me to "chill before you combust."
I pretended I was fine.
I wasn't.
I kept replaying last night in my head, every small detail because every detail felt important.
The way her hands shook when she leaned over the bridge railing.
The tiny crack in her voice when she whispered that she trusted me.
The instinct — pure, unthinking — that made me step closer, like my presence alone could keep the world from hurting her.
And now?
She'd vanished into silence.
I sat at my desk, laptop open, same sentence reread for the tenth time, getting nowhere.
Finally, I gave up pretending.
Grabbed my jacket.
Left the apartment.
The evening air hit me like a reminder: cold, sharp, grounding.
My feet carried me toward her building before my brain fully agreed to it.
I wasn't going to knock.
I wasn't going to push her.
I just needed to know she was okay.
Halfway there, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out fast, stupidly hopeful.
Not Mia.
Lily.
Lily: She's not picking up. I'm worried.
Lily: Please check on her. But don't scare her. You know how she gets when she feels cornered.
James: ^ Listen to Lily. Don't be a feral golden retriever about it.
I shoved the phone into my pocket, jaw tensing.
By the time I reached her building, the tension sitting under my ribs had turned into a tight ache.
Her windows were dark except for a faint glow — maybe a lamp, maybe the TV. She was home. She was safe. That helped. A little.
But I didn't go up.
Instead, I sat on the steps outside her building like an idiot with too many feelings and nowhere to put them.
A couple walked past, laughing.
A car drove by, headlights washing over the street.
Wind rattled the branches above me.
And all I could think about was her.
How she didn't deserve the pain she carried.
How Liam walking back into her life had shaken her more than she'd admit.
How the idea of her crying alone in that apartment made me feel something I didn't have a name for yet — something too big, too heavy, too real.
I stayed until the cold settled into my bones.
Then I texted her one last time.
Ace: I'm not asking you to talk. Just… let me know you're safe. That's enough.
I didn't expect a reply.
I didn't get one.
But as I walked home, I told myself something I wasn't sure I believed:
She was pulling away because she needed space.
Not because she didn't want me there.
Not because last night meant nothing.
And definitely not because she felt nothing.
She did feel something.
I saw it.
I felt it.
It hit me like a pulse under the quiet.
A silence between heartbeats.