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CHAPTER 24: The Sound That Wouldn't Come
The music room was dark.
Eli sat at the piano, fingers hovering above the keys, unmoving. The silence in the room wasn't peaceful—it throbbed. Heavy. Loud. Mocking.
He had always found refuge here. The piano had been his voice when the world went mute after the fire. But tonight…
The sound wouldn't come.
He pressed a key.
It echoed—a lonely note, lost and thin. It didn't sound like him. It didn't sound like her. It didn't sound like them.
He slammed the lid shut.
The bang reverberated through the room, but inside him… nothing cracked. Nothing was released. It just sank deeper, heavier.
His hands balled into fists on his lap. The image of Ava clutching that file burned in his mind. The look on her face—devastation, recognition, remorse. But also something else.
Love?
He didn't know what to do with that. With her.
The girl from the fire. The one whose voice had been the last thing he remembered before the world turned black. The one he never thought he'd meet again.
The one he had kissed.
The letter. He hadn't meant for her to find it. That part of him—the boy who had scribbled hope into every line—it was never supposed to see the light of day. That was his heart on paper.
And now she held it.
He let out a shaky breath. "Why you, Ava?"
She hadn't set the fire. He knew that.
She'd been a child, too.
But something inside him recoiled anyway. The kind of pain that didn't need logic to survive. The kind that just existed.
Still, even now… part of him wanted to go to her.
Part of him missed her.
He reached blindly for the keys again, pressed one softly.
This time, a note rang true.
Then another.
And another.
A melody started. Hesitant. Fragile. Like a question waiting to be answered.
He played the piece he'd written for her—the one he thought she'd never hear. The one from the letter. His fingers moved slower this time, like he was tracing every memory, every heartbeat.
He didn't know what forgiveness looked like.
He didn't know if he could give it.
But he knew one thing—
He wasn't ready to let her go.
Not yet.
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