It started with a letter in her locker.
Ella opened the familiar creamy envelope, her pulse quickening as her eyes scanned the now-familiar script.
"If I were braver, I'd read these to you.
But I'm learning.
And with you, I'm becoming."
"This one is about the time you fell asleep in class and drooled on your notebook.
I watched you wake up in a panic and pretend it was a new form of punctuation."
"You were human. Beautifully, perfectly human.
And I loved you a little more in that moment."
She laughed out loud, drawing curious glances from passing students. But she didn't care. She pressed the letter to her chest and whispered, "Kieran Blake, you're trouble."
The letters kept coming.
He left them in her tote bag, under her coffee cup at the campus café, once even folded inside a copy of Wuthering Heights she checked out from the library. Each one was a window into his mind — vulnerable, funny, romantic, raw. With each new page, she uncovered another part of him.
And slowly, she gave parts of herself back.
One evening, she left a letter tucked inside his notebook during class.
"You once wrote that I carry galaxies in my eyes.
Maybe.
But you gave me a universe to look toward."
"I see you, Kieran. All the quiet, all the thunder. I see you."
When he read it, he looked up at her — stunned, eyes glassy. He didn't speak. He didn't need to.
By mid-March, they were inseparable.
They sat in the library together, sharing headphones and scribbling in journals. They explored old bookstores and hidden gardens. She introduced him to her favorite ice cream shop. He read her poetry in the planetarium beneath simulated stars.
But with growing intimacy came vulnerability — and the slow unraveling of secrets once safely hidden.
One rainy afternoon, Ella waited for him outside their usual study spot. He was fifteen minutes late. Then thirty.
She texted him. No response.
By the time the rain turned to mist, she was soaked and cold — and a little hurt.
When he finally arrived, his hair was damp, shirt clinging to his frame, but his eyes were distant.
"I'm sorry," he said quickly, running a hand through his hair. "I got caught up with something."
She tried to smile, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "You disappeared."
He looked away. "I didn't mean to."
"You could've said something," she said softly. "I waited."
"I know. It's just—some days, I don't know how to be… out here. Exposed. It gets loud in my head."
Ella stepped closer. "You're allowed to have off days, Kieran. I just need to know where I stand when you shut the world out."
He looked at her then, like he wanted to let her in and push her away all at once.
"I've spent most of my life being invisible," he said. "Now I have you, and part of me is terrified I'll mess it all up."
Her heart cracked at the edges.
"You won't," she whispered. "Not if we're honest with each other."
He nodded, voice tight. "I want to be. I do."
They stood in silence, raindrops slipping from his hair to his collar, the weight of something unnamed between them.
Finally, he reached into his coat pocket and handed her a letter — soaked at the corners, ink smudged, but intact.
"I was going to give this to you today," he said. "Maybe it'll say it better than I can."
She read it that night, curled up on her bed, his words bleeding gently into the page.
"There are days I still feel like a ghost.
But with you, I remember I'm real.
You touch me like I'm solid — like I matter."
"I'm learning how to stay.
Even when I want to vanish.
Because staying means being seen.
And being seen by you is worth everything."
Tears welled in her eyes.
Not from sadness — but from the staggering realization that love, real love, wasn't always perfect. Sometimes, it was messy. Fragile. Sometimes it had rain-soaked letters and late apologies.
But it was also poetry and progress. Laughter and learning. Trust built in the margins of fear.
And in Kieran Blake, she'd found someone who didn't just admire her from afar.
He was walking toward her — slowly, earnestly, one open letter at a time.
To be continued…