The rain had come early that afternoon, soft and steady, turning Aurivelle's cobblestone streets into a watercolor painting of blurred golden lights and misted storefronts. Lana Vienne had always loved the city like this-when everything felt just a little more cinematic, like a story unfolding in real time.
She ducked into Café Amour, the little bookshop nestled between a florist and an antique store. It wasn't that she was searching for anything in particular. Some places simply felt like refuge, and today, the world outside was too loud.
The bell chimed softly as she stepped in, shaking off raindrops from her coat. The scent of aged paper and vanilla-laced coffee wrapped around her like a worn-in embrace. She wandered the aisles with no real direction, letting her fingers skim along the spines of novels, pausing at one with a weathered cover and a title embossed in gold.
And then a note fell from the pages of the book.
A single piece of paper, left behind by someone unknown to her.
It wasn't crumpled, not hastily abandoned. No coffee stains or careless folds. Just a note, written in ink that hadn't yet faded, as if someone had left it here only recently.
She shouldn't have picked it up. It wasn't hers.
And yet, before she could stop herself, her fingers closed around the edges.
The handwriting was deliberate, the kind that belonged to someone who knew the weight of words.
"Maybe in another life, we would have met in a different way. Not as strangers caught between fleeting moments, but as something more. Maybe..., just maybe, you would have stayed."
A quiet ache bloomed in her chest.
She didn't know who had written it, or who it was meant for. But standing there, beneath the soft glow of the overhead lights, it felt like something unfinished. Something waiting.
She read it again.
And then, carefully, she folded it and took it to her seat, and ordered a coffee.
Unbeknownst to her, across the city, a man with storm-grey eyes and ink-stained hands was returning to the place he had once left behind.