Chapter one:Eva
The scent of rain clung to the cracked pavement as Eva Mathis stepped out of the coffee shop and into the fading light. The storm had passed, but the air still trembled with the kind of tension that always made her uneasy—like something unfinished was waiting just beneath the surface.
She paused on the sidewalk, her coffee cup forgotten in her hand. The streets of Edgewater were quiet in that familiar, post-storm hush. A few distant cars hummed through the main road, their headlights casting long streaks across the wet ground. Somewhere, a wind chime stirred gently. The kind of silence that didn't feel peaceful—but heavy. Watchful.
It had been seven years. Seven years since she'd packed everything she could fit into her aging Volvo and drove away from the only place she’d ever called home. Seven years of building a new life—of growing a career, making friends who didn’t ask about her past, and pretending she didn’t see him in the face of every man who spoke too gently or smiled too crooked.
She had been good at pretending.
Until the letter.
She still hadn’t told anyone about it. Not her roommate. Not the therapist she saw sometimes when she was brave enough to admit that bravery wasn’t her strong suit. Not even herself, really—not out loud. Because to acknowledge the letter was to acknowledge the part of her that never truly let go.
Come home, Eva. I never stopped waiting.
She’d read it once, then again, then burned the envelope just to stop her hands from shaking.
And now she was here. Back on Main Street. Back in the same small town with the same whitewashed buildings and familiar cracks in the sidewalk—only now, she walked it as a stranger.
Edgewater hadn’t changed much. But she had.
There was more sharpness to her now, in the lines of her face, in the way she stood like she was always ready to defend herself. The soft-voiced girl who once wrote poetry in the margins of her textbooks and kissed Noah Hayes beneath the old elm tree was long gone. Or at least, she should have been.
But the truth was: Eva had never stopped hearing the echoes of that summer. The ache in her chest wasn’t something time had dulled—it had simply learned to be quiet.
Until now.
She made her way down the street slowly, like each step might wake something she’d tried to bury. There was the bakery where she’d worked every Saturday. The corner where Noah had first kissed her on a dare. The park bench where they had sat for hours that night after graduation, talking about nothing and everything. She could still feel the weight of his hand on her knee, the way his thumb traced lazy circles against her skin.
Regret bloomed sharp in her throat.
It hadn’t been the leaving that broke her—it was the way she’d left. No goodbye. No explanation. Just silence. She told herself it was to spare them both the pain, but deep down she knew it was because she was afraid. Afraid of staying. Afraid of becoming someone’s everything. Afraid of being loved too well, and not knowing how to hold it without breaking it.
And Noah had loved her too well.
He had loved her like she was made of light. And she’d left him in the dark.
Eva stopped walking and looked up
Across the street stood Hayes Books & Vinyl.
The windows were glowing faintly, lit from within by soft yellow light. The awning still flapped gently in the breeze, its edges frayed like someone had meant to fix them but never got around to it. She felt her breath hitch at the sight.
It hadn’t changed.
And that hurt more than she was prepared for.
She didn’t go inside. She couldn’t. Not yet.
Instead, she stood there on the sidewalk, her fingers tightening around her coffee cup, her heart thudding out a rhythm of memories she didn’t want but couldn’t escape.
Maybe this was a mistake. Coming back. Thinking time would make things easier. Thinking closure was something you could find instead of something you had to create. But the moment she read that letter, the part of her that had always belonged to Noah—the part she’d never reclaimed—had stirred back to life.
And now she was here.
So close.
So full of regret. But not ready not yet