Chapter 16 — THE QUIET DISTANCE
Elaris City woke to another morning of pale sunlight, the kind that slips gently through the clouds and paints everything in silver calm. In the studio, the faint hum of the kettle was the only sound. Cathy stood by her easel, her eyes tracing the lines of her unfinished sketch — the one she had drawn after Adrian’s meeting with the visitor.
He arrived not long after, looking the same as always. But she could tell something was different. His smile reached his lips, yet not his eyes. His shoulders were tense, and there was a weight in the air around him that hadn’t been there before.
He placed a small bag of pastries on the table. “Your favorite,” he said quietly.
She smiled in gratitude but didn’t touch it. Instead, she picked up her pen and notepad. Her handwriting was soft and small.
You didn’t sleep well.
He paused, then nodded. “Just a long night. Some things on my mind.”
She hesitated before writing again. The man from yesterday?
Adrian looked at her, and for a moment, he wanted to tell her everything — about the family empire, the lies, the inheritance, and the life he had run from. But the words felt too heavy for the peaceful space she had built around them.
So he simply said, “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
Cathy looked down, pretending to nod, but her eyes dimmed just slightly. The silence between them wasn’t new, but it felt different today. It wasn’t the comfortable quiet they used to share. It was a quiet filled with something unsaid.
Luna noticed it too when she stopped by later that afternoon. The atmosphere in the studio had changed. Adrian worked with focus that seemed forced. Cathy painted without humming her silent tune. The usual soft energy between them had turned fragile, like glass that could break with one wrong word.
Luna touched Cathy’s shoulder gently. “Is everything okay between you two?” she asked.
Cathy shook her head. She didn’t know. She couldn’t name it. She only knew that something precious was slipping away quietly.
That evening, when the studio lights dimmed and the sky outside turned lavender, Adrian stood by the window watching the city below. Cathy joined him, carrying two cups of tea. She handed one to him, and for a while, they stood side by side in silence, watching the slow drift of car lights and the river that curved like a silver ribbon through Elaris.
He finally spoke. “You ever think about leaving this city?”
She blinked, surprised. Her hand moved slowly as she wrote, Why?
He smiled faintly. “Sometimes I wonder what life would be like somewhere no one knows us. Just peace. Just…” He looked at her then. “Just you and me.”
Her heart warmed, yet something in his tone carried an ache. Like he was already saying goodbye to a dream he didn’t know how to keep.
She touched his arm gently, the way she always did when words weren’t enough. He turned to meet her eyes, and for a moment, everything in the room went still. The city lights reflected in her gaze — quiet, soft, endless.
But then his phone rang.
The sound broke the stillness. He glanced at the screen and his face went pale for a moment before he turned away to answer. Cathy stood back, watching the slow tightening of his posture, the quiet anger in his voice, the way his shoulders stiffened as he whispered, “I said I don’t want anything to do with that.”
He hung up and turned, forcing a smile. “Just work. Nothing important.”
Cathy didn’t write anything. She simply nodded, her heart tightening.
When he left that night, she stayed by the window again, sketching by the soft glow of the streetlights. But her lines were uncertain. The image blurred between each stroke.
In her drawing, the two figures she usually drew — the silent girl and the man under the umbrella — were now standing farther apart.
Between them, a thin line of rain began to fall.
And as she looked at it, Cathy realized that love, even when strong, could sometimes tremble under the quiet weight of secrets.
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