If only...

Chapter 12

The rain had turned into a gentle mist by the time Will left the shop that evening. We hadn't spoken much after his confession, after that raw moment between us. I didn't have the words. Neither of us did, really. Instead, we stood there in the dim light, both waiting for something to happen. But nothing did, and eventually, after a long silence, he told me he'd let me think about everything.

I didn't know what to feel as I watched him leave. Relief? Fear? Maybe a mix of both. The silence that had filled my life for the past year had suddenly shifted—there was still quiet, but now it felt different, like a new kind of waiting had settled in. I locked up the shop after he left, the clang of the door and the turn of the key punctuating the strange heaviness in the air.

I didn't sleep that night.

I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying everything that had happened. His voice. His face. His words. The way he had stood there, vulnerable, waiting for me to say something, anything. And the way I hadn't. I had been too afraid. After all, how do you just open yourself up again after you've spent a year trying to stitch yourself back together?

I kept thinking about how much time had passed—twelve months of silence, of wondering, of waiting for something that I had convinced myself was never coming back. And now that he was here again, standing in front of me, offering me something fragile, something that might break all over again, I didn't know how to respond.

I pulled Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet off my nightstand and opened it to a random page, hoping his words would give me some sort of clarity, some kind of answer. But as I read through the familiar lines, nothing jumped out at me. Nothing filled that void of uncertainty. Rilke's words had always been a comfort, but now, they felt distant, like they belonged to someone else's world.

By morning, my eyes were heavy, but I couldn't afford to close the shop just because of a sleepless night. I dragged myself out of bed, ran my hands through my hair, and went through the routine as though nothing had changed. But everything had. I could feel it in the way my hands shook as I opened the door, in the way I kept glancing at the clock, wondering if Will would come back today—or tomorrow—or the next day.

But he didn't.

Days passed, then weeks, and the crisp autumn air grew colder, biting at my skin whenever I stepped outside. I thought about him constantly, my mind a restless loop of what-ifs, of if only... Each evening, as I sat alone in the shop after closing, I felt that familiar ache creeping back. The ache of not knowing. Of being caught in between.

Would he really come back? Or was this just another fleeting moment, another goodbye wrapped in hope?

It was late October now, almost a full month since the night Will had appeared. I hadn't heard from him, and every day that passed without a sign of him made me wonder if he had changed his mind, if he had decided that maybe it was easier to stay away after all. Maybe this time, he wouldn't come back.

I tried to distract myself with work, but the shop felt emptier than ever. Customers came and went, but I barely registered their faces. I smiled, I sold books, I gave recommendations when asked, but my heart wasn't in it. Everything felt muted, like I was moving through the days without really being in them. I felt like a ghost in my own life.

One evening, as I sat at the counter flipping through an old poetry anthology, the door creaked open. I glanced up, half-expecting some late customer who'd forgotten the time, but it wasn't a customer.

It was Will.

He stood there in the doorway, his coat wet from the rain, his hair clinging to his forehead in damp curls. His green eyes found mine, and for a moment, I couldn't move. I couldn't even breathe. It was like seeing a memory come to life.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice soft but steady. "I know I said I'd wait, but I couldn't stay away."

I swallowed hard, my heart pounding in my chest. "Why didn't you come back sooner?"

He hesitated, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. The shop was empty except for the two of us, the silence between us thick with everything we hadn't said.

"I needed to give you time," he said, his hands slipping into his pockets. "But I've thought about you every day since that night. And I realized... I can't keep waiting for the perfect moment, because it doesn't exist. I don't want to lose any more time."

I stood up from behind the counter, the air between us charged with something I couldn't quite name. Fear, maybe. Hope. The memory of all the things we had been, and all the things we hadn't.

"What do you want, Will?" I asked, my voice quieter than I intended. "What do you really want?"

He stepped closer, closing the distance between us slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. "I want you. I want us. Whatever that means, whatever it looks like. I'm not afraid anymore."

His words hung in the air, suspended between us like fragile glass. I looked at him, standing there with his heart in his hands, offering it to me, and I realized in that moment that the fear wasn't just his. It was mine too. I had been so afraid of letting him back in, so afraid of being hurt again, that I hadn't let myself believe that this could be real. That maybe, just maybe, we could figure this out.

I took a deep breath, my heart pounding as I looked into those familiar green eyes. "I don't know if this is going to work, Will. I don't know if I can trust you the way I did before."

He nodded, his expression serious but soft. "I understand. And I'm not asking you to trust me right away. I just... I want the chance to prove that I'm here for real this time."

The silence between us felt different now—heavier, but not in the way it had before. This wasn't the silence of unanswered questions or unresolved tension. It was the kind of silence that comes before something new. Something fragile, yes, but something real.

I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to put into words all the things I was feeling. So instead, I just stepped closer, closing the final gap between us. Will's eyes searched mine, and for the first time in a year, I let myself believe that maybe this wasn't the end.

Maybe it was the beginning.

"I don't want to lose more time either," I said, my voice barely more than a whisper.

And with that, the space between us finally disappeared.