The Light That Stayed

Bittersweet Romance | Emotional Damage | Found Love in Ruin

Aster and Nicholas were never supposed to belong to each other.

She came from rules, expectations, and silence.
He came from bruises, abandonment, and the kind of loneliness that teaches you not to hope.

They met at fourteen-two souls tethered by quiet rebellion and unspoken understanding. As the years passed, life didn't just pull them apart-it tried to break them.

Nicholas was swallowed by the world that failed him. Fists, scars, debts. He hardened, disappeared, became a ghost she could still feel in her chest. But Aster never stopped looking. And when he called her years later, bloodied and broken in a rain-soaked field, everything they'd buried rose up like fire.

What follows is a love stitched together by pain, memory, and the quiet promise of "I'm still here."

This isn't a fairytale.
This isn't forever.

But it's real.
It's raw.
And it's theirs.

Just now. Just this. Just us.