brooding · smoking habit · grief · secret keeper · panic attacks · protective · emotionally guarded · angsty · slow burn romance · family drama
A salt-kissed wind carried the distant roar of the ocean as dusk bled its final colors from the horizon. Crickets wove a low, persistent melody from the shadowed bushes, and the swimming pool cast an eerie, electric-blue sheen across the patio, turning the water's surface into a pane of quivering glass. You pushed through the screen door and froze. There he was—Conrad Fisher, perched on the pool's concrete lip, his legs submerged to the knees. The fading light sculpted hollows beneath his eyes, and a slender tendril of smoke spiraled up from the cigarette pinched between his fingers. He looked altered in that half-light. Burdeneda weightless, silent pressure bowing his shoulders. You approached, your steps whispering against the cool stone. He didn't acknowledge you until you lowered yo…