(Adrian's POV mixed with Elara's inner voice)
The gallery was quieter than usual that evening only the hum of lights and the faint echo of footsteps across the marble floor. The rain outside had slowed, but the air inside carried that same weight, that same unspoken tension.
Elara wandered between the displays, her fingers brushing against frames, pausing at one corner of the exhibition room where sketches were kept for the upcoming show. She wasn't looking for anything in particular. But then, she saw it her face sketched in graphite lines, delicate and incomplete, as if the artist had stopped right before finishing the truth.
Her breath caught.
She turned the paper slightly, eyes tracing the name signed at the corner.
Adrian Vale.
When he appeared from the other side of the room, his sleeves rolled, carrying a portfolio, her heartbeat stumbled.
"You drew this?" her voice was soft, but the accusation beneath it was sharp.
Adrian froze for a second before answering, "I don't show that sketch to anyone."
"But you drew me."
He looked down, jaw tightening. "You were just light. I was studying the way it falls on people."
Her lips curved into something between disbelief and hurt. "You don't even know me, Adrian."
He stepped closer, his tone quiet but cutting. "Then stop looking at me like you already do."
The gallery lights flickered once. Then again.
And suddenly darkness.
A blackout swallowed the hall. The only glow came from a small emergency candle near the door, its flame trembling like a secret.
Elara didn't move at first. She could hear his breathing somewhere near the canvases, steady but close.
"Don't," she whispered. "This isn't right."
But then his hand brushed hers by accident, by gravity, by something neither of them could name. The warmth spread too quickly, faster than fear could stop it.
"Sometimes," Adrian said, his voice barely audible, "silence paints louder than sound."
The candlelight danced across their faces, revealing shadows that leaned closer than truth allowed.
Elara's heart pounded against her ribs part fear, part recognition.
She wanted to step back, but instead, she whispered, "Then what are you painting now?"
He met her gaze eyes dark, alive, and fractured all at once.
"You," he said. "But I'll never finish it."
The rain outside started again, soft but endless, like applause for something that should not have happened yet did.
When the lights finally came back on, they both stood apart, pretending the world hadn't just shifted in the span of a heartbeat.
But the air between them still burned the echo of a touch that felt like confession.
The silence after the power returned felt heavier than the darkness itself.
Elara fixed her gaze on the floor, pretending to be fascinated by the pattern of marble tiles. Adrian stood a few steps away, his shadow stretching long and uncertain on the wall. Between them, the candle still flickered though it was no longer needed its small flame trembling as if it knew what had almost happened.
"I shouldn't have drawn you," he said quietly.
Elara turned her head, eyes still glistening from the candlelight. "You already did."
He nodded, swallowing the weight of his own confession. "And now I can't erase it."
There was something raw in his voice the sound of a man who had spent too many years speaking only through his art, never through his heart.
Elara moved closer, not out of courage, but because the silence was unbearable. "You draw to remember or to forget?"
Adrian's eyes met hers. "Both."
He let out a slow breath, his fingers tightening around the sketchbook as though it were the only thing keeping him grounded. "I thought I buried everything after she died. I thought… if I built enough walls, maybe grief would stop knocking."
Elara's voice softened. "And now?"
His answer was a whisper almost like prayer. "Now I see the same light again. And it terrifies me."
For a heartbeat, she didn't know what to say. The gallery's stillness made every breath sound too loud, too fragile. Somewhere outside, thunder rolled distant, yet familiar, as if the world itself remembered the storm that had once taken someone from him.
"I'm not her, Adrian," she said at last.
"I know," he replied, his expression unreadable. "That's what makes this worse."
He stepped back, his voice trembling between restraint and desire. "Whatever this is, it can't happen. You don't want to be another unfinished piece in someone else's ruin."
Elara wanted to argue, to tell him that she wasn't afraid of being broken only of never being seen. But the words never left her. Instead, she looked at the sketch on the table once more, her likeness staring back with eyes that seemed to know too much.
"Maybe some stories aren't meant to be finished," she whispered, tracing the edge of the paper with her fingertip.
Adrian didn't answer. He simply watched her walk toward the door, her steps light but certain, leaving behind the scent of rain and a silence that would keep him awake for nights to come.
When the door closed, he exhaled slowly, the candle flickering once before dying out completely the darkness claiming what little warmth was left.
And somewhere between the sound of the rain and the echo of her footsteps fading, Adrian realized:
he hadn't built in silence all these years.
He had only been waiting for the one who could destroy it.
That night, the rain didn't stop.
London glistened like a dream that refused to sleep reflections of city lights bleeding across wet streets, each one trembling like a memory trying to stay alive.
Adrian walked alone beneath the awning, his coat dark with rain, the sketch of Elara still folded inside his pocket. He could still smell the faint trace of candle smoke on his skin a scent that clung not to his body, but to the moment that refused to fade.
He stopped at the corner, where the gallery lights shimmered against the puddles. Through the glass, he saw Elara for a brief second standing near one of her own paintings, head tilted as if lost in thought. Her hand brushed her hair behind her ear, the same way she had done in the candlelight hours ago.
And just like that, the ache returned.
Not the kind that begged to be healed but the kind that reminded him he was still alive.
He wanted to go in. To say something. Anything. But he didn't. Because he knew that if he took one more step toward her, the fragile line between what was right and what was inevitable would break.
So instead, he stayed there a man drenched beneath the London rain, watching through glass, like an artist forever separated from his muse by the frame of his own making.
Inside, Elara turned slightly, sensing something someone. Her eyes found the window. For the briefest moment, they met his.
Neither of them smiled.
Neither of them looked away.
It was an unspoken confession written in raindrops and reflected light the kind of moment that could never survive daylight.
Then the bus passed by, splashing through the puddles, and when it was gone, so was she. The gallery lights dimmed; the world returned to its rhythm.
Adrian closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the air tasting of rain and regret.
He whispered to no one,
"Some beauty is meant to hurt."
And as he walked away, the wind carried the faint hum of distant thunder soft, lingering, like the memory of her voice.
That night, London kept their secret.
And in the silence between storm and dawn, two souls began to remember what it meant to feel again.