Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

SOMETHING FELT… DIFFERENT when I woke up.

Not wrong.
Just different.

The air had changed.
Colder.
Thicker.

The room felt quieter, like it was holding its breath.
Like the ship was listening.

I dressed slower that morning.
Tried to shake the feeling. Tried to remind myself this was still part of the story I was writing with her—Evelyn, the girl with a soul like a flickering candle that refused to blow out.

But the silence followed me.
Down the hallway. Into the dining room. Onto the deck.

It wasn’t just me.
People were talking softer. Looking at the sky a little longer than usual.
The clouds had teeth behind them.
And the wind had something to say.

She found me before I found her.

Evelyn.
Wearing a green dress I hadn’t seen before.
A little more serious today. Still beautiful—but something behind her eyes was tighter.
Not fear. Not quite. But pressure.

“You feel it too,” she said before I could even speak.

“Yeah.”

She didn’t ask what I meant.
She just nodded.

“The ship’s not as big as it was yesterday,” she said quietly. “Funny, isn’t it? How that happens?”

“I think the world shrinks when you start to care about someone,” I said.

That got a smile.

Only for a moment.

Then she looked at me and said, “I had a dream last night.”

I didn’t move.

“You were there,” she continued. “But not like this. We weren’t on a ship. We were in a field. And I was wearing red. And you said something to me.”

“What did I say?”

She hesitated.

“You said… not yet.”

We stood in silence for a while.

Then she slipped her hand into mine.

“Walk with me?” she asked.

“Always.”

We walked all day.

Through rooms we hadn’t explored.
Past halls filled with piano music, and others filled with nothing but echoes.

She didn’t ask many questions.
She just looked at me like I was a story she used to know—trying to read between the lines of something she’d forgotten.

And I let her.

Because some part of me knew:
The closer we got…
The more the world would try to take it away.