It always started with rain.
Elise Morgan watched as the sky wept over Dervin's Hollow, silver drops painting the shop windows in steady trails. She tightened her coat around her and pushed open the creaking door of Ash Lane Books. The scent of damp wool and aged paper welcomed her like an old friend.
Inside, the world was quieter. Safe.
She came here every Thursday after work—her ritual. Clara, the shop owner, had long stopped asking if she needed help. Elise didn't come to shop. She came to remember, and sometimes, to forget.
Books had always been her solace. But lately, she wasn't reading much. Instead, she'd been writing—letters. To a stranger.
It had started with a poem left between the pages of a book.
Pablo Neruda. Line 23 circled in red ink.
A note beneath it: "What if love was waiting in a verse?"
She'd replied, slipping her response into the same book days later. It became a secret game, a poetic affair with someone she'd never met. She called him "A." He called her "E." No names. No faces. Only ink and feeling.
Today, she wasn't sure why her steps had quickened.
Until she saw him.
Back turned, tall frame silhouetted against the poetry shelf. Fingers trailing along titles like a pianist lost in thought. His coat was still damp from the rain, and when he turned, something in her stilled.
Dark hair. Storm-gray eyes. A quiet kind of sadness.
He looked at her like he knew.
"Elise," he said softly, voice uncertain.
She froze. "How...?"
He held up a book—Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Her breath caught. Her letter had been inside that one.
"I hoped you'd come today," he said. "I've been reading your words for weeks."
She felt the floor tilt beneath her.
"You're A," she whispered.
He smiled, eyes flickering with relief. "And you're E."
They stared at each other, two ghosts made real.
"Do you want to get coffee?" he asked. "There's a lot I want to say without ink between us."
She hesitated. Her heart said yes.
But the rain whispered something else.
Something cold.
Because hours before, she had received a letter from a lawyer. Her late father's estate—long since settled—had been disturbed. New information. A new name.
The one responsible for her family's ruin.
Ashton Callahan.
And now she stood in front of A.
"Ash," he said, as if it were nothing.
Short for Ashton.
The room swayed.
"I'd love to," she said, smiling through the tremor in her voice. "Coffee sounds perfect."
Because she needed to know.
Because maybe she was falling.
And because love, like fire, always starts with a spark—
Even if it ends in embers.