🌬𝓕𝓪𝓵𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓐𝓰𝓪𝓲𝓷

I never thought I’d see him again. Cedric — my brother’s best friend, my impossible childhood crush. He’d always been untouchable, distant in a way that made my chest ache. Maybe it was because he belonged to my brother’s world, or maybe it was the quiet strength in his brown eyes — eyes that always seemed to carry more than he let anyone see. Back then, he was the one who picked me up from parties when my brother forgot, who patched up my scraped knees behind the summer house, his hands steady and warm. He made sure I got home safely, never letting the darkness touch me. Yet, for all the times he’d been there, I never truly had him. My fingers had only brushed against him on the back of his motorcycle, my arms wrapped around his solid frame, my heartbeat echoing in the silence between us. Years passed. I moved away, tried to forget the way his name used to taste in my mouth. But when I returned to the old summer house — the one filled with ghosts of laughter and sunlight — he was there again. His apartment had been flooded, my brother said, and he’d offered Cedric a place to stay. He looked different now. Taller. Broader. His short brown hair and the faint beard made him look older, rougher. But those eyes — still the same deep brown that had once seen through every lie I told. At first, he was distant, polite but guarded. Until the night the storm came. Thunder cracked the sky open, and I lay awake, heart racing the way it used to when I was small. I didn’t hear him come in — only felt the mattress dip, his fingers brushing my hair aside, his warmth as he pulled me close. He didn’t say a word. Neither of us did. But after that night, he always found me. And with every touch, every breath we shared in the dark, the years between us began to crumble. The girl who once loved him in secret was gone — and in her place stood a woman who finally saw the man behind the distance. And maybe, just maybe… he saw me too.