In the city of Elmira-where cobbled streets met sleek storefronts and cafés buzzed with student chatter-Dr. Joshua Bennett lived a life of quiet order. At just twenty-five, freshly graduated from medical school, he had returned to Almira University...
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Aina's POV
I sat on the narrow bed, turning the encrypted drive over in my hands like a prayer bead. My mother's words echoed in my mind: "You can't be the heroine who saves everyone. You're twenty-three years old—you should be building your own life, not carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders."
Twenty-three years old. The number felt surreal. When had I stopped feeling young? When had every decision become about duty instead of desire?
I thought about Joshua—brilliant, gentle Joshua who used to steal glances at me across the lecture hall when he thought I wasn't looking. Joshua who had stumbled through that first awkward conversation about my thesis proposal, his usual eloquence deserting him whenever our eyes met. Joshua who had confessed his love to me outside that convenience store, drunk and broken and believing I was just a hallucination conjured by his tortured mind.
"You've ruined me. Completely and utterly ruined me," he had said, swaying on his feet, his inhibitions dissolved by alcohol and despair. "Do you have any idea what you do to me? How hard it is to see you every day and pretend you're just another student?"
I could still remember the raw emotion in his voice, the way his hands had trembled as he reached for me. "I can't stop thinking about you. It's torture, Aina. Beautiful, exquisite torture."
But more than that, I remembered the night it all started to unravel. Running through the rain-soaked streets of Almira, a hooded figure pursuing me, terror clawing at my chest as fragmented memories of past pursuits flooded back. And there was Joshua, standing in the rain, concern etched on his face even before he understood what was happening.
I had flung myself into his arms, sobbing, desperate for safety. "Someone was chasing me," I had managed between gasps, and he had held me without question, without hesitation.
Later, by the water's edge, I had tried to tell him the truth—or at least part of it. "I am not Aina from Almira, not from Turkey. I am someone from Finland." The words had torn from my throat like shards of glass.
"Let me go Joshua. You deserve better," I had pleaded, trying to push away from him.
But he had held me tighter, his voice firm despite the confusion in his eyes. "No, Aina. I'm not letting you go. I don't care where you're from. Finland, Turkey, or the moon - it doesn't matter to me. You're Aina, the woman I've come to care for deeply. That's all that matters."
He had thought I was a figment of his imagination that night at the convenience store. He never would have said those words if he'd known I was real, that I was there, that I was catching him as he fell. But when I had tried to give him the chance to walk away, when I had offered him the truth that should have sent any rational person running, he had chosen to stay.
What kind of life was I asking him to accept now? Always looking over our shoulders, always wondering if the next knock on the door would be armed men instead of colleagues. Always having to lie about my past, my family, the reasons I sometimes woke up screaming from nightmares I couldn't fully explain.
