Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THAT NIGHT, IT rained.

Not a storm. Not yet.
But enough to drive people inside. Enough to make the windows weep.

Evelyn and I stayed in the gallery.
A quiet little corridor with paintings and benches and nobody else around.

She leaned against me with her head on my shoulder, thumbing the edge of her notebook.

“I don’t want this to end,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to.”

She looked at me, eyes glassy.

“Yes it does,” she said. “Everything does. That’s why it matters.”

I didn’t argue.

Because I didn’t know how to tell her that this wasn’t just a trip.
That the countdown had started the moment I stepped through the curtain.

And that somewhere out there…
the iceberg already existed.

That night, I held her hand a little longer before we parted.

She didn’t kiss me goodbye.
She just pressed her forehead to mine.
And whispered—

“Don’t disappear.”

And I wanted to say I won’t.
But my heart said I already have.