between you & me | 18 +

"The space between you and me seems so small tonight, and somehow, it's holding every kind of love I thought I'd lost forever."
***
Everyone said she survived the crash, but she knew better.
Whatever she was doing, it was not living.

Twenty-seven-year-old Celia Ashbourne had an empire at her feet. She signed multi-million dollar deals with the same hands that had once hoped to hold a little boy, while she sang the lullabies which still haunted her worst nightmares.
But grief had made her stronger, colder-efficient in a way that terrified men who had never buried love and come back colder.
The world saw power in her name. Celia Ashbourne only saw everything she lost it to.

Aaron Hale arrived like a mistake she was not quick enough to correct.
He wore mismatched socks two days in a row, forgot to wear them on the third day, spilt his coffee in the boardroom during a meeting and tried to wipe it off with his sleeves-and yet managed to dismantle a problem faster than anyone on the senior team.
He was sunshine. But the kind that sneaks in through closed blinds.
He smiled like the world had not failed him, too, and somehow that was worse.

Aaron never mentioned the child, but the drawings of misshapen flowers and two stick figures spoke for him. Celia never asked, not about the pictures, not about the absence behind his bright eyes when he thought no one was looking.

Two different people, two different lives.
Whatever existed between them-stayed exactly where it belonged,
until it no longer did.