ISABELLA’S POV
"Yours."
The single word hung in the charged air, a thunderclap in the silence of my shattered world. It resonated not just in my ears, but in the very marrow of my bones, stirring something ancient and fierce. It was an answer, and yet it posed a thousand new questions, each one screaming louder than the last.
"What... what do you mean, ’Yours’?"
The question was desperate, laced with a fear that this was all a trick, a cruel illusion.
My voice sounded wrong — thin, breathless, stretched tight like a wire about to snap. I stepped back instinctively, but he kept his hand close to my arm, not touching, just there, like he was afraid I’d fall over from the bed.
"I don’t..." I shook my head hard. "I don’t understand. I-I’ve never met you in my life. I just met you today. I don’t —" My throat closed up. "But it feels like... like I’ve known you forever and everything’s messed up but also right at the same time and Aria’s not freaking out which makes it even worse because —"
"Isa."
His voice wrapped around me like a warm hand closing gently over my mouth.
Not commanding.
Not scolding.
Just... solid
"Hey. Look at me."
I did. Without thinking.
It was a scary, familiar urge.
"Breathe."
I tried. Air stuttered in my lungs, jittery and uneven. My heart felt too big for my ribcage.
He stepped closer — not touching me, just close enough that his warmth nudged through the storm in my chest.
"In." His voice drops low, steady like he’s done this a thousand times with me.
I sucked in a breath.
"And out."
I let the breath go.
"Again," he said softly.
And I did.
Slow breath in.
Shaky breath out.
And just like that, the crazy spinning slowed down. Didn’t stop — just eased up a bit. I hated that it worked. Hated how my body listened to him.
"Are you calmer now?" he asked, softly.
No.
Not even close.
But I nodded anyway, because some part of me trusted him more than I trusted anything else.
"Good," he said softly. "Look at me."
I did.
God help me, I did.
His eyes were... steady. Gold and grounded and impossibly patient for someone who had just kissed me like the world was ending.
"Ask me again."
I swallow. "...What did you mean by ’yours’?"
He hesitated just one second — just one — but I felt that pause like a hand closing around my throat.
Then he exhaled.
"I’ve... come to your bakery for months."
My brows knitted. "My bakery?"
He nodded once, slow, as if afraid I’d try to run away again.
"Your bakery," he repeated, his voice barely a whisper, but it carried to me with an unnerving clarity.
"The first day I saw you, I —"
He stopped, his jaw tightening. He started again.
"— I fell in love with you."
My heart thumps so hard it hurts.
He kept going.
"I kept coming back." He huffed a little, like he was making fun of himself. "Or haunting the doorway, really. I couldn’t get myself to talk to you."
My eyes got big.
He — this man — was shy?
"And one day," he went on, "Your friend caught me staring at you."
Despite everything, a strangled laugh bubbles out of me. "Oh no."
"Oh yes." His eyes got warmer. "She marched right up to me and almost kicked my butt."
I blinked. Then blinked again.
A laugh burst out of me — raw, unguarded, and almost hysterical — because of course Aria would do that.
"Oh God. Of course she did..."
He stares at me.
God. The way he looks at me when I laugh —
Like he’s starving for the sound.
Like he’s remembering something I forgot.
His lips curved, just barely.
"You look beautiful when you smile."
I stopped smiling immediately and glared to cover the way my stomach flips. "Continue."
He chuckled under his breath. "Okay, okay. Continuing."
"Thank you," I muttered at him, flustered.
He angled his head. "You’re welcome."
Ugh. Infuriating man.
"So," I pressed, "Aria almost beat your ass. Then what?"
"Well," he said slowly, "I begged her for a meeting with you outside your work space."
That stunned me into stillness.
Aria?
Aria arranged... this?
"So that’s how I ended up at the amusement park today." His gaze softened with something warm, devastatingly familiar. "And you made it easy to talk to you. After you..." He paused and smiled or tried to... it was a half smile.
I groaned, covering my face. "I’m sorry I puked on you."
"It’s fine." he says immediately. Too fast. Too softly.
"It is absolutely not fine."
"Isa," he said, with gentle finality, "it’s fine."
I dropped my hands, heart thundering.
"But that still doesn’t explain why I’m having — these — these weird flashes. Like I met you and it got wiped from my memory. Like my body knows you, but my mind doesn’t. Why did it feel like my memory got wiped?"
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, his hand, still hovering just shy of my arm, finally closed the distance. His touch was warm, grounding, a deliberate anchor against the whirlwind inside my skull. It wasn’t restraining; it was connecting. And the sheer, impossible rightness of it made my knees feel weak again.
And he came closer, and closer, lowering his head so his words brushed my ear, warm and calm and impossibly steady.
"Go out with me," he murmured.
"For two weeks."
"Give me that... and you’ll find the answer you’re looking for."
The air between us hummed, thick with the weight of his whisper. My pulse thrummed in my ears, a frantic drumbeat that mirrored the chaos in my mind. His hand remained at my arm, steady and warm, as if anchoring me to this moment before it could dissolve into another one of those flashes — the kind that left me gasping, like I’d nearly drowned in someone else’s memories.
"Two weeks," he’d said. Like a promise. Like a warning.
I tilted my head back to meet his gaze, golden irises that shouldn’t have felt so familiar, yet somehow mirrored the way my blood sang when he moved. My fingers twitched toward his chest, brushing against the erratic rhythm of his heartbeat — too fast, too fierce, like mine.