Chapter 5 Rain between us

Rain came gently at first - a quiet tapping on the roof, like fingers trying to wake a memory. By morning, the clouds had fully taken the sky, stretching gray and endless over Windmere Bay.

Victory stood by the window with a mug of tea, watching droplets race each other down the glass. She had always liked the rain. It was honest. It didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was - soft, cold, necessary.

Still, she hadn't expected to miss the stars.

And yet she did. Or maybe, she admitted to herself, she missed him.

Frank.

He had started to occupy a strange space in her thoughts - not loud or overwhelming, but persistent, like a melody that kept finding its way back to the surface.

She pulled out her phone and typed: Are you watching the rain today? Then she backspaced through the words. She wasn't sure where the line was - between connection and intrusion.

A knock pulled her out of her thoughts.

When she opened the door, there he was - Frank, damp from the rain, holding a book in his hand and not saying a word.

"A book on constellations," he finally said. "Thought maybe you'd want to know the stories behind the shapes."

She smiled despite herself. "You walked here in the rain?"

"You've come out every night for the sky," he said, almost shyly. "Seemed fair."

She stepped aside, letting him in for the first time.

They sat in silence on the couch, flipping through pages filled with ancient myths - heroes and monsters, gods and broken hearts. The kind of stories that felt a little too close, a little too true.

And somewhere between those pages and the sound of rain, something quiet and real began to bloom.

Not love. Not yet.

But something like it.