After he said that, I only nodded, the weight of everything still sitting heavy in my chest, and reached for my keys. The door opened into the quiet, familiar space of my aunt's house—too quiet, almost unreal after the chaos we had just left behind. The house was large, spread across two floors, but I didn't hesitate. I led Rafael upstairs, straight to the kitchen I preferred, the one no one really used except me and my cousin Ethan. It felt safer there, removed, like the rest of the world couldn't reach me. I avoided the living room entirely—I always did. I sat on one of the stools by the counter, and he took the one beside me without a word, close enough for me to feel his presence, not close enough to feel cornered. "Do you want something?" I asked, my voice quieter than I intended. "Iced tea would be fine," he replied, then added, almost casually, "but let me help. Don't make me feel like a visitor." I nodded again, and we moved around each other in the small kitchen space, our movements careful, almost synchronized without trying. The simplicity of it should have calmed me. It didn't. We made the drinks and sat down again, side by side, the cold glasses sweating lightly against our hands. I stayed quiet. Too quiet. Because I knew that if I spoke even one word, everything inside me would spill out in a way I wouldn't be able to control. My leg started shaking first, subtle at the beginning, then harder. My hands followed. I tried to steady the glass, but my grip failed me. It slipped, hit the floor, and shattered into sharp, scattered pieces that echoed too loudly in the stillness. I froze for half a second before dropping down to clean it, ignoring the tremor in my fingers, ignoring the warning in my body. I just needed to fix something. But the glass caught my skin before I could stop it, slicing across my palm. A sharp sting, then warmth. Blood. I stared at it like it belonged to someone else. "Anna—" Rafael was already beside me, his voice tight now, different. "What's wrong? Why are you shaking? Stop, you're hurting yourself—we'll get something, a cloth—" I ignored him. Completely. I kept reaching for the broken pieces like it mattered more than anything else. "Anna." This time his voice cut through, sharper, firm enough to make me pause. "I'm fine," I said quickly, too quickly; the words were empty even to my own ears. Not Anna, not fine. I pushed myself up, needing distance, needing air, needing anything that wasn't this moment. "Where are you going?" he asked, but I didn't answer. As I walked fast, my vision blurred, my throat tightened, and the tears I had held back finally emerged. I didn't want him to see me like that. I didn't want anyone to see me like that. But before I could get away, his hand caught my shoulder, stopping me. He tried to turn me toward him, gently at first, but I resisted, pulling away, refusing to face him. He didn't let go. His grip tightened—not harsh, but certain—and then his other hand came up, holding me in place. I tried to shove him back, my hands pushing against his chest, my breaths uneven, my vision shaking. "Let me go," I said, but it came out broken, barely there. He didn't move. Instead, he pulled me into him, wrapping his arms around me in a way that left no space between us. I fought it at first. I hit his chest, again and again, not hard enough to hurt him, but enough to try and make him release me. He didn't. He just held on, steady, unshaken, like he had already decided he wasn't letting me fall apart alone. And somewhere between the struggle and the silence that followed, something in me gave in. My hands stopped pushing. My body went still. And then the tears came—real this time, uncontrollable—as I let my head fall against his chest, the sound of his heartbeat grounding me in a way nothing else had all night.
For a while, I stayed like that, my head resting against his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat as if it could anchor me to something real. My breathing slowly began to match it, each inhale less shaky than the last, each exhale softer, until the storm inside me quieted just enough for me to feel something close to calm. I shifted slightly, meaning to pull away, but his hand came up gently, holding me in place—not forcing, just steady—and his voice followed, low and certain. "It's okay. You're going to be fine." Something in the way he said it made it feel less like empty comfort and more like a decision he had already made for me. So I stayed. I don't even remember when we ended up sitting on the floor, our backs against the kitchen counter, the broken glass forgotten somewhere behind us. His arm was still around me, my head still against him, like neither of us had questioned how we got there. And then, without planning it, without even realizing when it started, I began to talk. The words came out fast at first, scattered, tripping over each other—about home, about the shouting, about the moment everything shifted in a single sentence. I told him about my parents, about the pregnancy, and how it seemed as if our lives were rewritten without our consent. And when I reached the part where one of us—me, Anna, Regina, any of us—might have to give up everything we had been working toward just to stay behind, just to hold things together, my voice broke again. The tears came back, quieter this time but heavier, sinking deeper. I didn't fight them. I didn't try to stop. He didn't interrupt either. He just stayed there, his hand moving slowly against my back, grounding, patient, letting me fall apart without making it feel like I was losing control. And for once, I didn't resist being calmed. I let him. We stayed like that for a while, the silence no longer suffocating but full, almost necessary, until he finally spoke. His voice was different now—quieter, but carrying something heavier underneath. "My mom and dad… they don't really live together anymore," he said, his gaze fixed somewhere ahead of us. "People think I came here to Germany for school, to stay with my grandma. That's what they believe." He paused briefly, like he was deciding how much to give away. "But the truth is, my siblings and I chose to leave. We couldn't stay there anymore—not with the way they kept fighting." His jaw tightened slightly before he continued. "They're about to get a divorce. And I didn't want to be there for it. I wanted no part in the argument about which child belonged to whom. There was no anger in his voice, just something colder. Final. "So I left. For good." I didn't move. I just listened. "It broke something in me," he added after a moment, more quietly now. "I used to believe in all of it. In love. In having something like what they had before everything went wrong. I thought I'd have a wife one day, build something real. But now…" He let out a faint breath that almost sounded like a laugh, but there was no humor in it. "Now I don't even know what love is supposed to be. I think it's just a word people use until things fall apart. So I'd rather not believe in it at all. Just live. Have fun. Keep things simple. No expectations." His words settled between us, and they felt heavier than anything else said that night. And something in me reacted before I could stop it. Because while he was talking about love as if it didn't exist, like it wasn't worth holding onto, I felt the exact opposite rising inside me. I looked at him differently in that moment—not just as someone who had been there when I needed it, but as someone I suddenly wanted to prove wrong. I didn't say anything. I didn't move. But the thought settled quietly, stubbornly, in the back of my mind. Maybe he didn't believe in love anymore. Maybe he thought it wasn't real. But I did. And for reasons I didn't fully understand yet… I wanted to be the one to show him that he was wrong.
After everything we had just said—after all the weight we had let spill between us—silence settled in, thick and unfamiliar. It wasn't the comforting kind from before; it felt charged now, almost fragile, like one wrong move could break whatever had just formed. He was still holding me, his arm steady around my shoulders, and I hadn't moved either, my head resting against him as if I had forgotten how to exist without that contact. I knew I should say something—anything—to make it less intense, less… real. So I did what I always did when I was trying to avoid something I didn't understand. I talked. "But you know," I started lightly, forcing a small smile that didn't quite reach my chest, "this day was supposed to be fun, right? Like last year… remember?" My eyes stayed fixed ahead of me, not really seeing the kitchen anymore but the memory I was building instead. "Everyone was happy. No couples yet in our crew, no drama, no cheating, no breakups… we just danced and laughed like nothing could ever go wrong." I let out a soft breath that almost sounded like a laugh. "That was the night everyone learned how to slow dance for the first time. You remember that, right?" My voice trailed off slightly when I didn't hear him respond. The silence stretched again, but this time it wasn't empty—it felt like something was building inside it. Slowly, I turned my head toward him. "Raf…" I began, but the word died on my tongue the second I saw his face. He was already looking at me. Not casually. Not distracted. Completely. His eyes were darker than usual, focused in a way that made my chest tighten without warning. For a second, neither of us moved. Then I noticed it—the subtle shift in his expression, the way he swallowed, the way his teeth caught his lower lip almost unconsciously. My gaze dropped without permission, following that small movement, tracing the line of his mouth before I could stop myself. And when I looked back up, something had changed. "Ann…" he started, his voice lower now, quieter, like saying my name meant more than it should. But I didn't let him finish. I held his gaze, steady this time, even as my pulse began to rise again. I felt it then—clear and undeniable—the awareness of how close we were. Too close. Not close enough. His eyes flickered down, just for a second, and I didn't need to guess where they landed. I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry, and without thinking, I mirrored him—my teeth brushing lightly against my lower lip, as if my body had decided to respond before my mind could catch up. The air between us shifted, heavy and slow, pulling us toward something neither of us had named. He leaned in first. Not fast, not sudden—just enough to close the distance little by little, like he was giving me time to stop him if I wanted to. I didn't. I couldn't. My breath caught somewhere between staying and moving, and for a second, everything else disappeared—the house, the night, the world outside this moment. It was just him. Just us. Just the space between our lips, narrowing with every quiet second. And then my phone vibrated. The sound cut through everything, sharp and out of place, like reality forcing its way back in. I didn't move at first, hoping it would stop, hoping I could pretend it didn't exist. But then the voice notification followed, louder than I wanted it to be. "Elliot sent you a message: Can we talk, please? I know you—" I reached for it quickly, turning it off before it could finish, before it could say something I wasn't ready to hear, let alone explain. The moment shattered. When I looked back at Rafael, he hadn't moved far, but something in his expression had shifted. It still had softness, but now it mixed with something sharper and questioning. He searched my face like he was trying to read everything I wasn't saying. A quiet second passed before he cleared his throat, pulling himself back just enough to create space between us again. "So… you and Elliot, huh?" he said, his tone controlled but not neutral. I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Not because I didn't have something to say—but because I had too much, and none of it made sense anymore. I closed my lips again, my silence stretching longer than it should have. His eyebrow lifted slightly, his gaze sharpening, waiting. And just like that, the moment that almost became something else turned into something else entirely.