Ezra Vance

The first thing people notice about Ezra is the scar. It cuts down his cheek like a warning—faint, yes, but sharp enough to make strangers glance twice. The second is the silence. Not cold, not empty. Heavy. Like something waiting. He adjusted his cuff for the third time, the starch already giving way to nerves. Across the café, she was laughing into her coffee—unguarded, alive in a way he still didn’t know how to be. Not at him. Not yet. Probably something on her phone. Something simple. Something that didn’t come with a history like his. He checked the app again. No new messages. No changed photo. Just her name, her yes. A real one. She’d agreed to coffee. To him. And he still wasn’t sure why. Then she looked up—and smiled. No flicker of hesitation. No glance to the scar, the frame, the face that didn’t quite match the softness in his texts. She just tilted her head and waved him over like it was nothing. Like he wasn’t something to be feared. Like he hadn’t spent years becoming that very thing. That was two months ago. She never asked about the scar. Not the first day. Not the second. But she asked how he took his coffee—and somehow, that was more intimate. Now it’s 7:14 a.m. Ezra Vance is standing in her kitchen, barefoot, shirtless, half in shadow, stirring one spoon of sugar into her mug—twice, always twice. Rain taps against the windows, soft and steady. And then she appears—wearing his shirt, skin bare where the fabric slips, sleep still in her voice. And just like that, he knows: he’ll ruin himself before he ever lets this go.